DVD Review: The Spring River Flows East
★★★☆☆ “How much sorrow can one man bear? As much as a river of spring water flowing east.” This quotation from Li Yu’s 10th...
★★★★☆ 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.
★★★★☆ American indie director Ira Sachs returns to UK screens with his comic romantic drama Passages, a pointed, revealing study of selfishness and an all-too familiar portrait of emotional indulgence, bolstered by three excellent lead performances.
★★★☆☆ “How much sorrow can one man bear? As much as a river of spring water flowing east.” This quotation from Li Yu’s 10th...
★★★★★ The classic film noirs – The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep – are not always known for their complex or sympathetic female...
★★★☆☆ It’s difficult to remain objective in assessing the films of Roman Polanski, whose accomplishments in cinema have been rightly overshadowed by the fact...
Damien Chazelle’s La La Land was ousted by Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight right at the death last night as the latter claimed Best Picture in...
Of all the Oscar protests – from Sacheen Littlefeather and Marlon Brando in 1973, to #OscarsSoWhite last year, Michael Moore castigating George W. Bush...
★★★☆☆ It’s some time since any degree of positivity has come out of a bitterly divided, and divisive, US of A. Peter Berg’s Patriots...
★★☆☆☆ Xavier Dolan has adapted theatrical works before. 2013’s Tom at the Farm was a divisive feature but rendered Michael Marc Bouchard’s play in...
★★★★☆ Just a week after Moonlight graced UK cinema screens in all its feverish beauty we’re treated to another hard-hitting US indie release that...