Cannes 2016: The Salesman review
★★★★☆ Asghar Farhadi is a film director of such consistent quality and control that the prospect of one of his new films is like...
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
Cannes 2016: Elle review
★★☆☆☆ Usually when we say a movie is reminiscent of the seventies, we mean it has a certain high quality to it redolent of...
Cannes 2016: Risk review
★★★★☆ Following the Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour, which recorded Edward Snowden blowing the loudest of whistles, Laura Poitras arrives in Cannes’ Quinzaine sidebar with Risk,...
Cannes 2016: Ma’ Rosa review
★★★☆☆ Going to see a Brillante Mendoza film at the Cannes is an awkward experience. He’s been granted fairly regular festival berths both here...
Cannes 2016: The Neon Demon review
★★☆☆☆ Nicolas Winding Refn – or NWR as he prefers to sign himself now – returns to Cannes with fashion world-based horror movie The...
Cannes 2016: Graduation review
★★★★☆ One of the leading lights of the Romanian New Wave, director Cristian Mungiu returns to Cannes with Graduation, a contemporary morality tale about...
Cannes 2016: The Unknown Girl review
★★☆☆☆ When Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne premièred Two Days, One Night at Cannes two years ago, they explained that it was their first western....
Cannes 2016: Personal Shopper review
★★★☆☆ Personal Shopper sees former Twilight star Kristen Stewart continue her Cannes run with a bracingly mad little ghost story that reunites her with...
