Film Review: Wildlife
★★★★☆ Paul Dano’s directorial debut Wildlife lands not with a thud but a slow caress, to be inhaled and ruminated on, its stagnant images...
★★☆☆☆ “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,” Percy Shelley once wrote in his sonnet England in 1819. He was firing his barbs at King George III but the words could just as well be used for any number of English monarchs including Henry VIII.
★★★★★ Turkish master director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to the Cannes Croisette with About Dry Grasses, a wonderful wintry meditation on male fragility and the way we often make our own hells and then deceive ourselves that we’re trapped.
★★★★☆ From sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan, Syria to Iraq and Iran, the climate crisis, drought, war, and oppression has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. It is treated as an ethical conundrum, but it isn’t. Either we wish to save those who are in danger of dying, or all our talk of human rights is just so much hot air. This is the core concern of Green Border.
★★★★☆ With Luca Guadagnino’s terrific Challengers, the acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name brings us the sub-genre we never knew we needed: the erotic tennis thriller.
★★☆☆☆ 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.
★★☆☆☆ Maïwenn’s French period drama Jeanne du Barry is the perfect opening salvo for the 76th Cannes Film Festival. It is as glitzy and gaudy as the festival itself, with its vacuous politics drowned out by the thunderous sound of it slapping its own back.
★★★★☆ Paul Dano’s directorial debut Wildlife lands not with a thud but a slow caress, to be inhaled and ruminated on, its stagnant images...
Slowly emerging from the political turmoil and boycotts it had faced the past few years, the Busan International Film Festival 2018 was one of...
★★★☆☆ As cultural curiosities go, they don’t get much more curious than Fred Rogers. A Pennsylvania pastor with a penchant for puppetry, he became...
Featuring a star-studded cast of Hollywood’s top actresses, Ocean’s 8 is the all-female take on the Ocean’s series inspired by the male-dominated 1960s Rat...
★★★★☆ While Anchor and Hope’s subject matter will undoubtedly pique the interests of a LGBTQ audience, it’s clear that director Carlos Marques-Marcet isn’t interested...
★★★☆☆ Bi Gan’s follow-up to Kaili Blues is a stylish noir which drifts through a fluid world of dreams, memories and languid conversations as its protagonist...
★★★★☆ Famous Fifth Generation Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s latest wuxia tale based in the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history is about power, intrigue and survival,...
★★★☆☆ A writer sits in a café listening in on conversations had over coffee and soju about serious and mundane matters. This 66-minute film...