★★☆☆☆ ‘Tis a pity: given the star power and promises of period drama, Serena (2014) fizzles onscreen very quickly. Through casting switch-ups and an extended production window, the hope of a solid product would naturally be quite high. Even with the bankability of of its lead actors firmly in place, Continue Reading
★★★★★ “You should have come when I was in bloom,” says one of the people interviewed by Dušan Hanák in his beautiful and staggering documentary, Pictures of the Old World (1972). A series of stills by Slovak photographer Martin Martinček were the inspiration, and Hanák seeks to capture the lives Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The second film of director David Ayer’s increasingly prolific career to be released this year following groggy Arnold Schwarzenegger shoot em’ up Sabotage (2014), Fury (2014) is an epic Second World War action drama that – like each of his previous works – looks to examine the inner workings Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Euphemia ‘Effie’ Gray was just twelve years old when esteemed Victorian art critic and writer John Ruskin wrote a novel for her called The King of the Golden River. It was a fable and the fairy tale looked like having a happy ending when some seven years later, Ruskin Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ There was a time when the zombie was considered the less illustrious horror stablemate to the sexier, more outwardly alluring vampire. The shift in popularity has risen significantly of late, and given the increasing prominence of the zombie mythos in mainstream entertainment, Doc of the Dead (2014) is both Continue Reading
Something of a surprise success story on the night given recent results, the two biggest accolades of the 87th Academy Awards were reserved for Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, the recipient of both Best Picture and Best Director Oscars as well as Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography. Best Continue Reading
