DVD Review: ‘Benny & Jolene’
★★☆☆☆ The feature debut from Welsh filmmaker Jamie Adams, Benny & Jolene (2014) – or, to give it its original title, Jolene: The Indie...
Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s “Abigail” mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless experience lacking creativity and wit.
★★★★☆ In Alex Garland’s Civil War, a group of journalists embark on a road trip to interview the US President amidst a second American Civil War, while exploring media’s dehumanizing relationship with violence.
★★★★☆ Having won the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, Cannes favourite and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with Monster, a masterful work of intricate storytelling, complemented by a lovely score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.
★★★★★ Theodor Adorno famously wrote that poetry was not possible after Auschwitz, but is cinema? Billy Wilder certainly thought so, getting footage from the camps as evidence as much as anything else. Steven Spielberg, Claude Lanzmann, Alain Resnais and Roberto Benigni have all with differing degrees of success tried their hands.
★★☆☆☆ The feature debut from Welsh filmmaker Jamie Adams, Benny & Jolene (2014) – or, to give it its original title, Jolene: The Indie...
★★★☆☆ Despite its title, Kiki Álvarez’s Venice (2014) is very much about Cuba. Specifically, it’s a rarely seen independent film from the country, marking...
★★★☆☆ One of two films at Toronto 2014 that take in a group of friends over the course of one balmy Cuban evening, Return...
★★★★☆ With Henry Fool (1997), Hal Hartley introduced the world to his garrulous and hedonistic eponymous rogue who, amongst other things, impregnated an impressionable...
★★★☆☆ Watching Michael Winterbottom’s The Face of an Angel (2014), it’s fascinating to try to decipher just how autobiographical it actually it is. An eclectic...
★★★☆☆ “If you wanna win the lottery,” claims Lou Bloom, a gaunt and greasy Jake Gyllenhaal in Dan Gilroy crime drama Nightcrawler (2014), “you’ve...
★★★☆☆ Whilst he may primarily be associated with the stylish Hong Kong gangster picks that have made him his name, director Johnnie To is...
★★★★☆ A collaborative journey across the spiritual plains of Northern Europe, Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s A Spell to Ward off the Darkness is...