CineVue
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Film Review: ‘Lawless’
★★★☆☆ The latest release from the Australian writer/director team of Nick Cave and John Hillcoat, Lawless (2012) features a gang of famous faces including Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Gary Oldman and Guy Pearce. Sharing some of the characteristics of their previous work, the duo have once again utilised extreme violence in…
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Film Review: ‘Anna Karenina’ (2012)
★★★☆☆ British director Joe Wright is certainly no stranger to sweeping period adaptations, having taken on both Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and Ian McEwan’s Atonement in recent years. His latest film, Anna Karenina (2012), is easily his most daring costume drama to date, utilising all manor of theatrical devices to bring Leo Tolstoy’s novel-come-paperweight…
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Film Review: ‘Dredd 3D’
★★★★☆ Approximately 35 years after John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra created him, Judge Dredd is now one of the most popular comic book characters of all time. Unfortunately, he has fared significantly less well on the big screen, with the 1995 Sly Stallone debacle failing to capture the character effectively. Thankfully, that’s not the case…
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Film Review: ‘Shut Up and Play the Hits’
★★★★★ Following on from 2010’s sublime No Distance Left to Run – an in-depth look at the formation, split and eventual euphoric reunion of Blur – directorial duo Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern return to theme of the band break-up with Shut Up and Play the Hits (2012), detailing the final day and performance in…
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Venice 2012: ‘The Life & Death of Marina Abramović’ review
★★☆☆☆ Bob Wilson’s Life & Death of Marina Abramović (2012) director Giada Colagrande has the good fortune to be married to one of Hollywood’s most multifaceted actors, Willem Dafoe, and to have been a good friend of Abramović from the tender age of 19, making her a shoo-in for the task of recording Robert Wilson’s…
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Venice 2012: ‘A Hijacking’ review
★★★★☆ This year’s 69th Venice Film Festival opened with Bait 3D (2012), which dealt with the perils of entering shark-infested water. We return to the deep with the equally dangerous and considerably scarier human sharks of the Indian Ocean, in Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s superb A Hijacking (Kapringen, 2012). The film opens with cheery chef…
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Venice 2012: ‘Something in the Air’ review
★★☆☆☆ Returning to feature length filmmaking after his brilliantly dynamic 2010 mini-series Carlos, Olivier Assayas’ Something in the Air (Après mai, 2012) deals with the coming-of-age story of young French student Gilles (Clement Metayer), who is torn between his political convictions and personal ambitions in the wake of the political turmoil of the Spring of…
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DVD Review: ‘Filthy Rich & Catflap’
★★★★☆ Whilst anyone with a fleeting interest in British comedy will be familiar with Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson’s star turns in BBC’s The Young Ones and Bottom, there are precious few who will be aware of – let alone have seen – the Ben Elton-written Filthy Rich & Catflap. Having reportedly only ever been…
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DVD Review: ‘Boardwalk Empire: Season 2’
★★★★☆ Whilst still in its relative infancy (with Season 2 released on DVD and Blu-ray this week), HBO’s Prohibition era crime saga Boardwalk Empire has already established itself as one of the finest TV dramas currently in production. The brainchild of The Sopranos writer Terence Winter, each and every episode is soaked through with mystery,…
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Venice 2012: ‘Outrage Beyond’ review
★★★☆☆ ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano returns to the Venice Lido this year with Outrage Beyond (Autoreiji: Biyondo, 2012), a sequel to his 2010 gangster drama Outrage. Writing, directing and editing, Kitano also stars as Otomo, a jailed Yakuza whose imminent release is making the Sanno family jittery. Both a nightclub hostess and a cop mixed up…