John Bleasdale
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Venice 2017: Suburbicon review
★★☆☆☆ In the black comedy Suburbicon, George Clooney takes us to the small town, white bread America that Donald Trump wants to MAGA us back to and uncovers that it wasn’t as great as all that. It joins the race for the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival.George Clooney hit the ground running…
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Venice 2017: The House By the Sea review
★★★☆☆ Three middle-aged siblings gather after their father suffers a stroke in The House By the Sea, a beautifully observed ensemble piece from French director Robert Guédiguian which today entered the competition for the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival.“Family isn’t a word. It’s a sentence,” ran the tagline to Wes Anderson’s The…
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Film Review: The Leisure Seeker
★★★★☆ With a puff of exhaust smoke and some dodgy steering, Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland trundle into UK cinemas as an elderly married couple on a final holiday in the battered RV that gives Italian director Paolo Virzi’s first English language film its title: The Leisure Seeker. Adapted from Michael Zadoorian’s novel, the film…
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Venice 2017: Foxtrot review
★★★★☆ War, grief and family are the themes of Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot, which joins the race for the Golden Lion at the 74th Venice Film Festival. It’s a daring and bold film, highly-stylised and imaginative, portraying an Israeli family’s reaction to bad news from the army.Samuel Maoz was in his late forties when he made…
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Venice 2017: Brawl in Cell Block 99 review
★★★★☆ Fans of Bone Tomahawk won’t be disappointed with director S. Craig Zahler’s bone-crushing, face-smashing, slow-burning genre mash-up Brawl in Cell Block 99. It stomped onto the Lido with a swagger and boasts a thumpingly good performance from Vince Vaughn.Bone Tomahawk was a bold debut. Half-John Ford Western, half-Ruggero Deodato gore-fest. Brawl on Cell Block…
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Venice 2017: Lean on Pete review
★★☆☆☆ British director Andrew Haigh gallops onto the Venice Lido with Lean on Pete, an equine coming-of-ager about a young boy and his horse. An adaptation of Willy Vlautin’s novel, Haigh shifts from his arthouse roots of Weekend and 45 Years to full-blown Americana. Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer) is a 15-year-old boy living in Portland,…
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Venice 2017: Endangered Species review
★★★★☆ Premiering at Venice, Gilles Bourdos’ Endangered Species plays like a French Riviera version of Robert Altman’s Shortcuts. It’s a deliciously shot vivisection of family life via three intertwining tales based on the short stories of American writer Richard Bausch.We open with a thrilling ride through the night as a group of young people on…
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Venice 2017: West of Sunshine review
★★☆☆☆ Showing in the Horizons sidebar at Venice, Jason Raftopoulos’ debut film West of Sunshine is a day in the life of Jim (Damien Hill), an inveterate gambler who somehow has to come up with the money to see off his bookie while at the same time looking after his son.Gamblers, like alcoholics, are a…
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Film Review: This Is Congo
★★★★☆ Daniel McCabe’s documentary is at times lyrical, at times shocking, frequently eye-opening and constantly fascinating. It’s an honest attempt to not only show that ‘this is Congo’, but also to ask the all-important question: how did the DRC fall into such disrepair? “To grow up as a child in Congo, according to God’s will,…
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Venice 2017: Human Flow review
★★★★☆ Receiving its world premiere at Venice, dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei crosses borders with his wide-ranging documentary Human Flow, an angry and compassionate witnessing of what looks like being the greatest man-made tragedy of our times.“No one leaves home lightly,” says a female refugee from Iraq. “You suffer hardship just to get to safety.”…