Film Review: ‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’
★★☆☆☆ Tom Cruise reprises his role as spy Ethan Hunt in Rogue Nation (2015), the fifth instalment of the Mission: Impossible franchise, this time helmed […]
Film Review: ‘Man with a Movie Camera’
★★★★☆ Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) still shines, even as an octogenarian. The film remains a testaments to the early days of […]
Film Review: ‘Beyond the Reach’
★★☆☆☆ With a homicidal big game hunter as its chief antagonist, Jean-Baptiste Léonetti’s Beyond the Reach (2014) has a ripped from the headlines topicality, but […]
DVD Review: ‘While We’re Young’
★★★☆☆ For his sixth feature as writer-director, Noah Baumbach continues a newly prolific streak with While We’re Young (2014), which furthers his approach to infusing […]
DVD Review: ‘War and Peace’
★★★★☆ Anand Patwardhan’s War and Peace was released in 2002, and its presentation of escalating nationalist posturing – aka the arms race between India and […]
DVD Review: ‘Suite Française’
★★★☆☆ Given that its source material is a beloved book with a potent history, the film adaptation of Suite Française (2014) is a sincere disappointment. […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Rossellini & Bergman Collection’
★★★★☆ On his 40th birthday the Italian director Roberto Rossellini received a surprise gift. It was a letter from the Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman: enchanted […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Listen Up Philip’
★★★☆☆ Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip (2014) follows a self-absorbed writer (Jason Schwartzman) who scuppers his fledgling career through sheer arrogance and misanthropy. It;s […]
Interview: Sheila Vand on vampirism and revolutions
“I don’t like when things are – I can’t believe I’m saying this – so black and white,” laughs Sheila Vand, the doe-eyed star of […]
DVD Review: ‘Clouds of Sils Maria’
★★★★☆ Youth, beauty and mortality are potent themes in Olivier Assayas’ latest feature Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart. Binoche […]
DVD Review: ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone’
★★★★☆ It’s easy to mistake Ana Lily Armirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) as purely a mash-up of spaghetti western, horror and […]
Film Review: Ruth & Alex
★★☆☆☆ Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton play Alex and Ruth Carver in Ruth & Alex (2014), a wistfully bland property-based dramedy that comes off as […]
Film Review: ‘Eden’
★★★☆☆ French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve isn’t exactly known for emotional subjectivity and visual bombast, so when a young raver tripping out in a field sees […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Third Man’
★★★★★ No cinematic genre can capture the inky morality of pernicious scavengers feeding on the carcass of post-war Europe like film noir. And no other […]
DVD Review: ‘Mommy’
★★★★☆ The fifth feature from worryingly prolific mid-twenties Quebecoise filmmaker Xavier Dolan, Mommy (2014) sees him returning to the themes that have fuelled his impressive […]
DVD Review: ‘The Human Centipede 3’
★★☆☆☆ Tom Six’s The Human Centipede 3: (Final Sequence) represents something of a challenge to the star-ratings system. Give it one star or give it […]
DVD Review: ‘The Face of an Angel’
★★★☆☆ Michael Winterbottom’s latest feature, The Face of an Angel (2014), explores the intersection of beauty, youth, sex and violent crime. Inspired by Amanda Knox’s […]
DVD Review: ‘The Gunman’
★★☆☆☆ With The Gunman (2015), Sean Penn becomes the latest inductee into that club slowly being filled by older gentlemen with a particular set of […]