CineVue
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DVD Review: ‘Starlet’
★★★☆☆ New on DVD this week through Soda Pictures, Sean Baker’s Starlet (2012) is a sun-drenched LA-based drama that’s almost as warm and glamorous as its geographical setting. Starring Dree Hemingway (the great-granddaughter of novelist Ernest Hemingway) in her first leading role, Baker’s film may contain the same adult iconography of his TV puppet show…
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Interview: Brie Larson chats ‘Short Term 12’
Next Monday (10 March) sees the release of Destin Daniel Cretton’s directorial debut Short Term 12 (2013) on DVD and Blu-ray, courtesy of Verve Pictures. Once an outside bet for a late Academy Awards run, the film unfortunately missed out on an Oscar nomination, particularly for its outstanding star performer, Brie Larson. Perhaps best known to…
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DVD Review: ‘Short Term 12’
★★★★☆ With Sundance hit Short Term 12 (2013), debut director Destin Daniel Cretton has crafted an intimate yet highly moving tale, bolstered further still by a powerful, superlative performance from up-and-coming star Brie Larson. Larson plays Grace, a twentysomething supervisor at a foster care facility – a mainly relaxed environment where the kids are free to…
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DVD Review: ‘Metro Manila’
★★★★☆ Sean Ellis’ Filipino drama Metro Manila (2013) took home the Best British Independent Film award at the BIFAs last December, although you’d be forgiven for not recognising its homegrown credentials. Set in a foreign capital, with dialogue primarily in Tagalog (which the director doesn’t speak), it may be a far cry from a kitchen…
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DVD Review: ‘In Fear’
★★★★☆ Over the years, four-wheeled vehicles have proved themselves as worthy settings for tense thrillers, Spielberg’s Duel (1971) and Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007) being two of the most successful examples. With In Fear (2013), Sherlock scribe Jeremy Lovering takes on the premise of a home invasion, confines the action into a car and documents events in…
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DVD Review: ‘Ender’s Game’
★★★☆☆ Orson Scott Card’s revered sci-fi novel Ender’s Game spent years in development limbo, directors and stars coming and going before South African writer and director Gavin Hood got behind the reins to bring it to the big screen. Hugo lead Asa Butterfield stars as Ender Wiggin, a child prodigy believed to have the potential…
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DVD Review: ‘Drinking Buddies’
★★☆☆☆ The American mumblecore movement has found itself at a crossroads of late it would seem, ironically caught in its own adolescent identity crisis. Whilst many of its alumni such as the Duplass brothers and Lynn Shelton have started taking life seriously, growing up and pursuing other creative avenues, the sub-genre now appears to be…
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DVD Review: ‘Age of Uprising’
★★☆☆☆ Following the runaway success of Danish director Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair (2012) a couple of years back, another period European drama of revolt and revenge starring the magnetic Mads Mikkelsen would undoubtedly have seemed like an excellent idea. Somewhat regrettably, Arnaud des Pallières’ Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas (2013), adapted from the Heinrich…
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Film Review: ‘Rome, Open City’
★★★★★ By 1944, Italy’s film industry was virtually non-existent. Funding in the arts was severed to pool resources in the reconstruction of the country’s war-torn landscape. Yet it were these financial obstructions that inspired one of the most important movements in 20th century cinema. Mere months after the Nazi withdrawal from Rome, Roberto Rossellini and…
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Film Review: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’
★★★★☆ Wes Anderson has long been a purveyor of painstakingly detailed worlds; heightened realities from which tastes and textures seem to leap off the screen. His latest offering, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), is no different and stars a wonderful Ralph Fiennes as rakish concierge M. Gustave. The aroma of his cologne, L’Air de Panache,…