Film Review: The Painted Bird
★★★★☆ Premiering in competition at last year’s Venice Film Festival, Václav Marhoul’s adaptation of Jerzy Kosińsk’s 1965 novel The Painted Bird is a gruelling...
Film Reviews & More
Most Recent. In John Bleasdale.
6 September 2024
Film Review: Firebrand
★★☆☆☆ “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.
26 July 2024
Film Review: About Dry Grasses
★★★★★ 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.
21 June 2024
Film Review: Green Border
★★★★☆ 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.
John Bleasdale
Film Review: Babyteeth
★★★☆☆ Shannon Murphy makes her feature debut with Babyteeth, a tragicomedy about a teenager facing terminal cancer. Teens dying young is a recurring theme,...
Film Review: Wasp Network
★★★☆☆ French director Olivier Assayas makes his Netflix debut with Wasp Network, a tale of spies, politics and refugees in a mid-1990s Cuba and...
Film Review: A Rainy Day in New York
★★★☆☆ Woody Allen returns with his 49th film, A Rainy Day in New York, as two young lovers decide to spend a couple of...
Film Review: Mike Wallace Is Here
★★★★☆ Long before the era of breaking news and 24-hour rolling coverage, when Fox was just a twinkle in Rupert Murdoch’s eye and CNN...
Film Review: Camino Skies
★★☆☆☆ Camino Skies tracks six pilgrims from New Zealand and Australia as they embark on the historic five hundred mile pilgrimage that winds across...
Film Review: Cuck
★★☆☆☆ Ours is the age of the poisonous neologism. Never have so many words been spawned to express disdain and hatred, like a speckled...
Film Review: Vivarium
★★★★☆ It’s easy to think that our lives have become bottle episodes in recent weeks: single location stories cut off from the grand narrative...
