DVD Round-up: Aug 2019 edition
August’s releases run the gamut from horror, urban thrillers, social justice and tender drama. While themes of modernity, paranoia and urban life prominently feature...
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.
August’s releases run the gamut from horror, urban thrillers, social justice and tender drama. While themes of modernity, paranoia and urban life prominently feature...
★★★☆☆ The Dreyfus Affair is chronicled as a turn of the century espionage thriller worthy of le Carré in Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy. There was a good chance that his film could have been withdrawn after the jury head Lucrecia Martel shared her dissatisfaction at the film being included in the competition.
★★☆☆☆ It’s the near future: a time of “conflict and hope”, according to the first title cards of James Gray’s latest offering, the space...
★★★★★ The Squid and the Whale director Noah Baumbach returns with his latest Netflix collaboration, Marriage Story, which sublimely manages to find humour and humanity in...
As the 76th edition of Venice commenced this week, the oldest film festival in the world has entered some choppy waters. First of all,...
For years the film industry has been releasing films for audiences that shock and scare. While horror films might be best released during the...
★★★★★ Joanna Hogg’s semi-autobiographical feature The Souvenir introduces Honor Swinton Byrne in a tour de force performance. It’s a stunning evocation of a young woman’s...
★★★★★ Contemporary British cinema has continued to surprise and amaze in recent years with the vast array of stunning directorial debuts. From the likes...