Cannes 2016: Julieta review
★★★☆☆ The first words that come to your mind after seeing a film by Pedro Almodóvar are usually ‘flamboyant’, ‘over-the-top’, or perhaps ‘fabulous’. His...
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: Dogs (Caini) review
★★☆☆☆ The camera passes over some scrubland, tracking close to the ground like a sniffer hound and then out over a pond of algae-covered...
Cannes 2016: Captain Fantastic review
★★★☆☆ Not to be confused with the plethora of superheroes currently smashing each other to bits on our cinema screens, Matt Ross’ Captain Fantastic...
Cannes 2016: Loving review
★★★★☆ It’s been a busy year for Jeff Nichols. His Midnight Special received its premiere in Berlin back in February and now his fourth...
Cannes 2016: Hell or High Water review
★★★★☆ There are a lot countries which are apparently no longer for old men. However, despite treading some familiar territory, British director David Mackenzie’s...
Cannes 2016: Toni Erdmann review
★★★☆☆ The buzz competition title of this year’s Cannes so far, German director Maren Ade’s third feature Toni Erdmann is a well-made, occasionally hilarious,...
Cannes 2016: Paterson review
★★★★★ “No ideas but in things” wrote William Carlos Williams, the patron saint of Jim Jarmusch’s sumptuous sonnet to poetry and ordinariness, Paterson. The...
Cannes 2016: Staying Vertical review
★★★☆☆ Following up his arthouse hit Stranger by the Lake, which played in Un Certain Regard in 2013, agent provocateur Alain Guiraudie returns to...
