Cannes 2015: ‘Louder Than Bombs’ review
Advertisements ★★★☆☆ Following the acclaimed Reprise (2006) and Oslo, August 31st (2011), anticipation was high for Joachim Trier’s English language debut, the family drama...
Film Reviews & More
Most Recent. In John Bleasdale.
17 March 2024
Film Review: Monster
★★★★☆ Having won the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, Cannes favourite and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with Monster, a masterful work of intricate storytelling, complemented by a lovely score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.
17 March 2024
Film Review: The Zone of Interest
★★★★★ Theodor Adorno famously wrote that poetry was not possible after Auschwitz, but is cinema? Billy Wilder certainly thought so, getting footage from the camps as evidence as much as anything else. Steven Spielberg, Claude Lanzmann, Alain Resnais and Roberto Benigni have all with differing degrees of success tried their hands.
11 January 2024
Film Review: Poor Things
★★★★★ Greek weird wave director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite) hits his stride with his strangest yet most deeply satisfying comedy fable yet, Poor Things. This exhilarating mix of Fanny Hill and Frankenstein is adapted by Tony McNamara from Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name.
John Bleasdale
Cannes 2015: ‘The Sea of Trees’ review
Advertisements ★★☆☆☆ My Own Private Idaho and Drugstore Cowboy director Gus Van Sant competes for the Palme d’Or with The Sea of Trees (2015),...
Film Review: The Tribe
★★★★☆ A title card at the beginning of Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s incredible debut feature The Tribe explains that the entire film is in sign language and there will be no voiceover and no subtitles. For that matter, there will be no audible spoken dialogue. We are immersed in the world of the deaf, but we are also, crucially, excluded from it unless you are fluent in Ukrainian Sign Language.
Cannes 2015: ‘Irrational Man’ review
Advertisements ★★☆☆☆ Woody Allen returns to his beloved Cannes with his story of crime and punishment in a sleepy up-state town, Irrational Man (2015),...
Cannes 2015: ‘Tale of Tales’ review
Advertisements ★★★★☆ Once upon a time, fairytales were folk tales. Then they became children’s stories, were made into Disney cartoons and now star Angelina...
Cannes 2015: ‘Our Little Sister’ review
Advertisements ★★★☆☆ Japanese director and Cannes favourite Hirokazu Kore-eda enters the race for the Palme d’Or with Our Little Sister (Umimachi Diary, 2015), adapted...
Cannes 2015: ‘An’ review
Advertisements ★★★☆☆ “Everything in the world has a story to tell,” explains a character in Japanese director Naomi Kawase’s new film An (Sweet Red...
Cannes 2015: Our picks of the Competition programme
Advertisements It’s that time of year again when the enormous poster outside the grand Palais is unveiled and, for this year at least, the...