Film Review: ‘Under Milk Wood’
★☆☆☆☆ In his childhood town, in his beloved Wales, Dylan Thomas is spinning in his grave. In what may be one of the most perverse […]
Film Review: ‘Taxi Tehran’
★★★★☆ By the very nature of its existence, Jafar Panahi’s latest film Taxi Tehran (2015) is a bold act of defiance. It’s his third such […]
Film Review: ‘Spectre’
★★☆☆☆ “The dead are alive,” we’re informed at the start of Sam Mendes’ second Bond outing Spectre (2015), and there’s a definite sense that this […]
Film Review: ‘Fresh Dressed’
★★★☆☆ Director Sacha Jenkins’ Fresh Dressed (2015) harks back to the early 1990s, the nascent days of hip-hop and the change in fashion engendered by […]
Film Review ‘Do I Sound Gay’
★★★☆☆ The ‘gay voice’ is a superficial character trait that can have serious implications for the men who possess it. Do I Sound Gay? (2014) […]
Film Review: ‘Black Souls’
★★★☆☆ Francesco Munzi’s Black Souls (2014) is a grimly serious family tragedy centred around the feuds within the Calabrian equivalent of the mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta. […]
DVD Review: ‘Theeb’
★★★★☆ “Only two kinds of creature get fun in the desert. Bedouins and gods”, the exquisitely cynical diplomat Mr. Dryden (Claude Rains) tells T.E. Lawrence […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Seconds’
★★★★☆ Although described as a sci-fi thriller in most quarters, both of these labels seem a little too disingenuous when it comes to identifying the […]
DVD Review: ‘Pasolini’
★★★★☆ For a love-letter between one great disruptor of Italian cinema to another, Pasolini (2014) is remarkably restrained. Cult director Abel Ferrara never once allows […]
DVD Review: ‘Mr. Holmes’
★★★★☆ At the heart of Mr. Holmes (2015) lies that old John Ford maxim about printing the legend. Bill Condon’s film is an investigation into […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Hellraiser: Scarlet Box’
★★★★★ Clive Barker’s S&M Gothic fantasia has been poorly served (tainted even) by a string of DTV sequels. The Liverpool-born horror visionary’s Cenobites and Lament […]
DVD Review: ‘Cartel Land’
★★★★☆ The Mexican drug trade and its impact on the US has been documented in several films and shows from Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000) and […]
Film Review: ‘Paper Planes’
★★★☆☆ In the underdog story that was Dodgeball (2004), the teams of Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller went head-to-head in Las Vegas, the spectacle broadcast […]
Film Review: ‘Mississippi Grind’
★★★★☆ With its loose road movie vibe and appealingly downtrodden turns from the two tremendous leads, Mississippi Grind (2015) certainly fits into the ‘they don’t […]
Film Review: ‘The Black Panthers’
★★★☆☆ “The strength of the Black Panther Party was its youth, its idealism and its enthusiasm,” says an aging member towards the close of Black […]
DVD Review: ‘We Are Still Here’
★★★★☆ Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here (2015) is an aptly gruesome tribute to the halcyon days of 1980s splatter movies and the cosmic horror […]
DVD Review: ‘Turbo Kid’
★★★★☆ Like it or not, we seem to be in the midst of a mini eighties revival which has seen the decade paid homage to […]
DVD Review: ‘Love Is All’
★★★★☆ Over the decades montage has been used to offer knowledge to an audience rather than to make them feel. Clearly, nobody explained this to […]