Cannes 2015: ‘Mon Roi’ review
★★☆☆☆ Mon Roi (My King, 2015) is a colourful yet clichéd relationship drama from French actor and director Maïwenn, playing today in competition at...
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 2015: ‘Chronic’ review
★★★☆☆ Following his brutal depiction of high school bullying in After Lucia (2012), Mexican director Michel Franco returns to Cannes in competition with Chronic...
Cannes 2015: ‘Valley of Love’ review
★★☆☆☆ Two legends of French cinema arrived on the Cannes Croisette today, with Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert starring as fictionalised versions of themselves...
Cannes 2015: ‘The Little Prince’ review
★★☆☆☆ On 30 December 1935, aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, along with his copilot, crashed in the Sahara desert while trying to break...
Cannes 2015: ‘Dope’ review
★★★★☆ Fresh from a successful bow at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope (2015) hit the Director’s Fortnight sidebar at...
Cannes 2015: ‘Alias María’ review
★★★☆☆ Showing in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes, Colombian director José Luis Rugeles’ sophomore effort Alias María (2015) is a tense thriller...
Cannes 2015: Love review
★★★☆☆ Trailing poster-fuelled controversy and its French director’s reputation as an arch provocateur, Gaspar Noé’s NSFW 3D erotica Love (2015) was the most midnight...
Cannes 2015: ‘Youth’ review
★★★☆☆ Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth (2015), his latest meditation on aging, memory and mortality, premièred at Cannes in competition today to assorted cheers and boos....
