★★★★☆ For much of the past decade, creatures of the night have had to stand by and watch as their charisma was leeched by toothless tween angst franchises. Fortunately, attempts are now being made to give succubi their credibility back. First came the droll literary ennui of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Writing about Justin Simien’s barnstorming debut feature Dear White People (2014), critic Armond White drew a line between the film and the Hollywood gatekeepers’ usually self-congratulatory cinematic response to race in America: “Simien’s humorous sensibility must deal with the fact that the racial…attitudes of American film culture are controlled Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Since its bow in 1987, Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical black comedy, Withnail and I, has become a bona fide cult-classic. For years audiences have revelled in its depictions of drunkenness, drug addiction and camp debauchery. Subsequently, Robinson’s most well-remembered film has garnered a great deal of mythologising and alcohol-fuelled hyperbole. Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Gérard Depardieu is barnstorming as the outrageous subject of Abel Ferrara’s lurid Welcome to New York (2014), inspired by the scandal that ended Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s career. The former IMF chief – and presumptive French presidential candidate – denied all charges and has now taken steps to sue the film’s Continue Reading
★★★★☆ After the critically adored The Kid with a Bike (2011) saw celebrated Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne take a softer approach to telling yet another tale of urban struggle, the brothers return with Two Days, One Night (2014), an agonisingly realistic story about the lengths to which one Continue Reading