Month: February 2017
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Film Review: A Cure for Wellness
★★★★☆ Gore Verbinski’s new film A Cure for Wellness returns the gothic genre to its roots in melodrama. A grand tale of love and death set in a creepy old castle, it’s primed with the irrational, the repressed, the uncanny and the supernatural. It’s fair to say that Verbinski and co-writer Justin Haythe really have…
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DVD Review: Memories of Underdevelopment
★★★★☆ Regularly heralded as the greatest Cuban film of all time, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment is a ranging, challenging work. A cine-essay blend of fictional narrative and documentary observation, it stands out even in the febrile atmosphere of post-revolutionary Cuba. The 1960s saw a number of widely touted films from what is often…
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DVD Review: The Crying Game
★★★★★ The Crying Game has come to be defined by its twist. More than something like Psycho‘s shower scene, it’s treated as such a good secret that it can’t even be casually discussed and it’s a shame that it became the film’s main cultural legacy. To describe The Crying Game as merely a great thriller…
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DVD Review: A Man for All Seasons
★★★★★ Just over fifty years after A Man for All Seasons won six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor for Paul Scofield, Fred Zinnemann’s adaptation of Robert Bolt’s stage play has found unique points of modern relevance. It is re-released at a time when its more conventional view of Sir Thomas More as hero,…
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Berlin 2017: On Body and Soul review
★★★☆☆ Opening on a woodland as two deer search through the snow for food, it’s clear from the start On Body and Soul isn’t a conventional love story. Their eyes meet and the stag wanders over to the doe, laying his head on her neck, an act of warmth and compassion in an otherwise cold,…
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Berlin 2017: Ana, Mon Amour review
★★★☆☆ Child’s Pose director and Golden Bear-winner Cãlin Peter Netzer returns to the Berlinale with Ana, Mon Amour, a tale of love, addiction and the memories of failed romances that linger and won’t be chased away. When we first meet, Ana (Diana Cavallioti) and Toma (Mircea Postelnicu) they’re at the preliminary stage of their relationship,…
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Berlin 2017: Adriana’s Pact review
★★★★☆ “Every family has their secrets,” claims Chilean director Lissette Orozco whilst introducing her debut film Adriana’s Pact – but what happens when these secrets get out? A deeply personal documentary about guilt and culpability, we see what happens when the personal and the political become inextricably entwined. Do the wounds of the past heal? And…
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Film Review: Tanna
★★★★☆ “Life is sweet living below the volcano,” says Dain, one of the star-crossed lovers of the South Pacific island of Tanna which gives its name to the Oscar-nominated feature directed by documentary filmmakers Bentley Dean and Martin Butler. Here, islanders do seem at first to have a paradisiacal life. We see the tribe’s life…
