LFF 2013: ‘Don Jon’ review
★★★★☆ Having worked under the tutelage of some of Hollywood’s finest directors in his twentysomething years in the industry, it would be safe to...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ Having worked under the tutelage of some of Hollywood’s finest directors in his twentysomething years in the industry, it would be safe to...
★★★☆☆ After a run of low-brow comedies that fans may have found a little disappointing, David Gordon Green – the writer and director of...
★★★☆☆ Liz Garbus’ latest documentary, Love, Marilyn (2012), opens with a bold gambit; reminding us that its subject has previously been the focus of...
★★★★☆ Following his sweet-natured children’s film I Wish (2011), which was released to great acclaim earlier this year, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Like Father, Like Son...
★★★☆☆ Once fierce box office rivals, the Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are looking as stacked as ever as they team up for their...
★★★☆☆ If you want to read about how former US president John F. Kennedy liked to have sex in the bath, then Palimpsest, the...
★★★☆☆ The Queen director Stephen Frears’ latest offering Philomena (2013), one of a plethora of Oscar hopefuls at this year’s BFI London Film Festival,...
★★★★☆ Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard star in Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves (2013), an eco-terrorism thriller that, whilst more accessible than her...