DVD Review: ‘Promised Land’
★★★★☆ Given the seasonal vagaries of critical favour and the fickle nature of theatrical distribution, it would be a futile exercise to spend time...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ Given the seasonal vagaries of critical favour and the fickle nature of theatrical distribution, it would be a futile exercise to spend time...
★★★★☆ A beautifully observant, heartwarming and compassionate film, Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours (2012) was one of last year’s quiet revelations. After a youth spent...
★★★★☆ Love hurts in more ways than one in Kieran Evans’ Kelly + Victor (2012), an impressive low-budget UK indie which, despite a couple of...
★★★☆☆ Beeban Kidron’s topical documentary InRealLife (2013), newly available on DVD this week, tackles the complexities of the internet from many a disturbing angle....
★★★★☆ Italy’s ‘Eternal City’ has long found itself the focus of cinema’s expressive lens, with Rome often proving the life-blood of films set there...
★★☆☆☆ Based on the grisly case of serial killer Robert Hansen, Nicolas Cage and John Cusack star in Scott Walker’s functional yet largely forgettable...
In what was the strongest indication yet of which films will walk away with what at next month’s Academy Awards ceremony, David O. Russell’s...
Perennial champions of the abridged form, the London Short Film Festival returns this month for its 11th incarnation, cementing its position once again as...