2014
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DVD Review: ‘In a World’
★★☆☆☆ Joining the contemporary collective of female filmmakers laying in the wake of the multi-hyphenate works of Lena Dunham, American actress Lake Bell makes her directorial debut with In a World (2013), a project she also writes and stars in. Always the ditsy foil or sidelined supporting foil in bland romantic comedies, from No Strings…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Computer Chess’
★★★★☆ An alumni of the mumblecore school for young American filmmakers, Andrew Bujalski is generally regarded as having made the first ‘official’ film of this demonstrably divisive sub-genre with Funny Ha Ha (2002). His fourth feature, Computer Chess (2013), successfully utilises this minimal and heavily naturalistic approach to tell the tale of a fictional chess…
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DVD Review: ‘The Colony’
★★☆☆☆ Jeff Renfroe’s The Colony (2013) paints a bleak picture of humanity’s future; a post-apocalyptic world where climate change has left the Earth shrouded in a permanent deluge of ice and snow. Starring Kevin Zegers and nineties action movie luminaries Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton, what at first promises to be a taut survival procedural…
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Special Feature: ‘Directory of World Cinema: South Korea’
It would perhaps be overstating it to claim that South Korean cinema had been invisible in the West before the second instalment of Park Chan-wook’s vengeance trilogy. Cannes contender Oldboy (2003) was, however, a well-placed hammer blow to the floodgates. Since then, international interest in the nation’s cinema has grown exponentially and has introduced European…
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Special Feature: ‘Directory of World Cinema: Brazil’
Intellect’s Directory of World Cinema series makes a welcome return by delving into the burgeoning and enticing landscape of Brazilian cinema. As well as being one of the world’s fastest growing economies, the film industry in Brazil is also experiencing a mighty resurgence of late, with almost 100 commercial features released in 2011 compared to…
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Special Feature: Vote Gamble for Blogger of the Year
We’re delighted to announce that one of CineVue’s finest contributors, Patrick Gamble, has been nominated for Blogger of the Year at the 2014 Richard Attenborough Film Awards. The nod came for his sterling review of J.C. Chandor’s sophomore feature All Is Lost, along with a string of other first-class pieces written for the site over…
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Sundance 2014: Wetlands review
★★★☆☆ David Wnendt’s Wetlands (2013) stars Carla Juri as Helen, an adventurous teen experimenting with sex, drugs and haemorrhoids.The daughter of divorced parents – and with countless issues feeding her angst – Helen spends her days indulging in casual encounters with strangers, vegetables and public toilet seats. One day the bleeding starts and Helen is…
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Film Review: ‘The Night of the Hunter’
★★★★★ “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” This is the cautionary, biblical advise offered up by Lillian Gish’s kindly foster mother at the outset of The Night of the Hunter (1955), Charles Laughton’s seminal Depression-era thriller. Not only did this prove to be Laughton’s…
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Film Review: ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’
★★★★☆ Opening to a drug-addled Leonardo DiCaprio tossing a dwarf, Martin Scorsese’s raunchy, ribald and gloriously satirical attack on American hedonism, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), is a feast of such vulgar delights that it would make Bacchus blush. The tone, whilst distinctly of the director’s oeuvre, possesses a lithe energy as yet unseen,…
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Film Review: ‘Oh Boy!’
★★★★☆ The crushing social angst found within a generation of despondent, shiftless hipsters has long been a mainstay of micro-budget filmmaking. Whilst Jan Ole Gerster’s German effort Oh Boy! (2012) shares many of these traits, this Berlin-set slacker comedy also boasts a heart of gold and an unassuming charm. We follow Niko (Tom Schilling), a young…