Film Review: ‘Zarafa’
★★☆☆☆ Kicking off an animated children’s film with a pair of terrified young slaves bound in chains being intimidated by a vicious mutt is...
Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s “Abigail” mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless experience lacking creativity and wit.
★★★★☆ In Alex Garland’s Civil War, a group of journalists embark on a road trip to interview the US President amidst a second American Civil War, while exploring media’s dehumanizing relationship with violence.
★★★★☆ Having won the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, Cannes favourite and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with Monster, a masterful work of intricate storytelling, complemented by a lovely score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.
★★★★★ Theodor Adorno famously wrote that poetry was not possible after Auschwitz, but is cinema? Billy Wilder certainly thought so, getting footage from the camps as evidence as much as anything else. Steven Spielberg, Claude Lanzmann, Alain Resnais and Roberto Benigni have all with differing degrees of success tried their hands.
★★☆☆☆ Kicking off an animated children’s film with a pair of terrified young slaves bound in chains being intimidated by a vicious mutt is...
★★★☆☆ New Yorkers staring skywards from below the World Trade Center, struck by a sense of terror and confusion, evokes dark memories of the...
★★★★☆ As much as writers and film critics in particular like to pronounce upon storytelling and the experiences of others, some tales are so...
★★★★☆ The ongoing battle for equality of the sexes is an issue that is constantly debated in the media – and rightly so. The...
★★★☆☆ The 1980s might have seen a thawing of Cold War tensions between the US and the USSR but in sport, when East played...
★★☆☆☆ Sleep paralysis – a condition whereby sufferers wake in the night to find themselves helplessly paralysed, overwhelmed with an impression of a nearby...
★☆☆☆☆ The play within a film that South African director Henk Pretorius builds Leading Lady (2014) towards shows the minutest promise during a laborious...