DVD Review: ‘Story of My Death’
★★★★☆ The libertine rationalism of pre-revolutionary France is fed to the lions in Albert Serra’s strange and transfixing Story of My Death (2013). A...
★★★★☆ Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s first film in six years, R.M.N. is a multi-faceted, oft-bleak, and occasionally surreal portrait of racism and toxic masculinity in Romanian society. In its depiction of a part of Europe struggling to keep up with neoliberalism, R.M.N exposes the dark mirror of liberal, globalised western European metropolitanism.
★★★★☆ An acerbic social satire, Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva’s latest reflects a cultural malaise rooted in cultural ennui. More than a casual swipe at modern social trends, Rotting in the Sun exposes a kind of cruelty, alienation, and social stratification that is only as modern as the technology through which it expresses itself.
★★★☆☆ Chilean director Pablo Larraín has made the treatment of the great, the famous and the powerful his topic of preference, eschewing the lower end of the social scale that first made him famous with films such as Tony Manero and Post Mortem. Nothing has quite gone as far as El Conde, however.
★★★★★ Childhood friends Na-Young (Greta Lee) and Hae-Sung’s (Yoo Teo) young lives are irrevocably changed when Na-Young’s family emigrate from South Korea to Canada, until the pair reconnect twelve years later. Past Lives, a film about love, friendship and fate, is an astonishing debut from South Korean-Canadian director Celine Song.
★★★★☆ The libertine rationalism of pre-revolutionary France is fed to the lions in Albert Serra’s strange and transfixing Story of My Death (2013). A...
★★★★☆ Both of the following are true: Jupiter Ascending (2015) is a giddy, sweeping adventure filled with interesting characters and stunning visuals; Jupiter Ascending...
★★★★☆ These days there is such a rich offering of TV dramas that it can be hard to know what to watch and what...
★★★★☆ Boiling terror down to essentials can be a winning formula for horror films: the phone call in Scream (1996), or the video tape...
“Have you cried as an adult?” My question to Ruben Östlund, the director of ice-cold Swedish black comedy Force Majeure (2014), is not as...
★★★☆☆ What could have easily been a glib provocation turns out to be rigorous examination of masculinity in crisis in the hands of Swedish...
★★★★☆ Tales of impossible love and the trappings of fame and fortune have long been staples of Hollywood cinema. However, to accuse Gina Prince-Bythewood’s...
“I love Curb Your Enthusiasm. I want to feel just as entitled as any rich, middle aged white man; that’s how entitled I want...