John Bleasdale
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Cannes 2018: Kore-eda’s Shoplifters wins Palme d’Or
The 71st edition of the Cannes Film Festival came to a close earlier today with Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda winning the coveted Palme d’Or for his devastating, brilliant and unconventional family portrait Shoplifters. This year’s Cannes began under a cumulus of clouds: the spat with Netflix, the selfie ban, the Harvey Weinstein scandal, a selection…
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Film Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story
★★☆☆☆ From director Ron Howard, Solo: A Star Wars Story blasts onto our screens starring Hail Caesar’s Alden Ehrenreich as the young man who was to become everyone’s favourite space cowboy. But does it jump into hyperspace or do we have a bad feeling about this? Ever wondered how Han got the name Solo? Ever…
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Film Review: 2001: A Space Odyssey
★★★★★ Stanley Kubrick’s visionary masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey returns to the big screen in a beautiful, newly-restored 70mm print, and proves once more the lasting quality of this epic piece of pure cinema. If you’ve never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, you’re in for a treat. This is the sort of film experience the…
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Film Review: Under the Silver Lake
★★☆☆☆ It Follows director David Robert Mitchell returns to cinemas – and MUBI in the UK – this week with his third feature Under the Silver Lake, starring Andrew Garfield and Riley Keough. Firmly dividing critics at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, there’s sadly little to recommend about this LA-set mind-fuck. Sam (Garfield) likes staring at…
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Cannes 2018: Shoplifters review
★★★★★ Cannes favourite Hirokazu Kore-eda returns to the Croisette for the seventh time with Shoplifters, a quietly devastating portrayal of family and theft in contemporary Japan, and one of his best works of recent years. The survival of families has been a constant concern for Kore-eda. Whether it’s the abandoned children of Nobody Knows, the…
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Cannes 2018: Mandy review
★★★☆☆ Italian-Canadian director Panos Cosmatos enters Cannes Critics’ Week with his second film, the psychotropic arthouse horror Mandy, starring Nicolas Cage and Andrea Riseborough as a couple terrorised by cultists. Over the years, Nicolas Cage has acquired a reputation as a mad dog actor. Whether gurning through Bad Lieutenant or the simply bad The Wicker…
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Film Review: The House That Jack Built
★★☆☆☆ Persona non grata and middle-aged man terrible Lars von Trier returns to UK cinema screens with serial killer black comedy The House That Jack Built, as slick as viscera and as vile as the subject it portrays. There’s a scene near the start of The House That Jack Built which pretty much sums up…
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Cannes 2018: 3 Faces review
★★★☆☆ Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is the theme of Jafar Panahi’s 3 Faces, a Chekhovian portrait of lives going to waste in an Iranian society of gender inequality and rural tradition. A young woman speaks directly to her phone, delivering a message, a plea to be heard by a famous…
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Film Review: The Image Book
★★☆☆☆ The cinema legend that is Jean-Luc Godard returns to UK screens for one night only (2 December) with The Image Book, a visual palimpsest of ideas and a muttering meditation on the world as the octogenarian finds it today. As the old saying goes, there’s a lot that’s new and interesting in Godard’s The…
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Cannes 2018: Ash Is Purest White review
★★★☆☆ Returning to Cannes for a fifth time, leading Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke presents his new film Ash Is Purest White, a story of love, sacrifice and betrayal spanning seventeen years of contemporary Chinese history. From as early as Platform, Jia has been linking the trajectories of his characters’ lives with the rapidly changing scenery…