Special Feature: In defence of the Coen brothers
In an article published in this weekend’s Guardian Film section, the writer Will Self takes upon himself the job of announcing to readers of...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
In an article published in this weekend’s Guardian Film section, the writer Will Self takes upon himself the job of announcing to readers of...
If you haven’t had the pleasure of making it to any of Bizarre Magazine’s ‘The Cut’ monthly underground cinema evening, then I strongly urge...
The highlight of the Barbican’s Michelangelo Antonioni Directorspective have arguably been the screenings of L’avventura (1960) and La notte (1961), the first two films of what has...
★★★★☆ If you were to read the synopsis of Missing (2009), you would probably expect a generic, non-sequitur horror flick full of the usual self-conscious...
The horror movie industry has grown somewhat stagnant in recent years, it has to be confessed. Many of the more interesting premises by which...
★★★☆☆ In Danny Lerner’s The Assassin Next Door (2009), Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace [2008], Max Payne [2008]) play Galia, a young woman who finds herself in...
As directorial debuts go, American Beauty (1998) is just about as close to perfection as it comes. Since his first feature blazed though the 2000 Academy Awards –...
★★★☆☆ From 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006) director Corneliu Porumboui comes the Romanian director’s latest film, Police, Adjective (2009), yet another strong entry within...