DVD Review: ‘White Reindeer’
★☆☆☆☆ Even as far back as 1843, when Charles Dickens penned his illustrious novella A Christmas Carol, the materialism of Christmas was already apparent....
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.
★☆☆☆☆ Even as far back as 1843, when Charles Dickens penned his illustrious novella A Christmas Carol, the materialism of Christmas was already apparent....
★★★★☆ In the early 1920s, Douglas Fairbanks was transformed from comedy star into swash-buckling heartthrob via The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Three Musketeers...
★★★★★ There is a scene part of the way through Hayao Miyazaki’s exceptional Spirited Away (2001) in which the young girl, Chihiro (voiced by...
★☆☆☆☆ After having his expressive wings clipped in exchange for genre formula with The Green Hornet (2011) and relinquishing his creative control to a...
★★★★☆ Making his return to filmmaking after his adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s novel The Woman in the Fifth (2011), Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski’s latest,...
★★★★☆ A new restoration of G.W. Pabst’s 1929 masterpiece Diary of a Lost Girl, demonstrates the luminosity of his iconic star, Louise Brooks, in...
★★★★☆ Memories of Tim Burton’s woeful 2001 Planet of the Apes remake were thankfully replaced with far fonder recollections in 2011 following the release...
★★★★★ A sprawling, almost empty hotel ensconced in the Anatolian steppes plays host to inhibited and isolated souls in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s captivating, slow...