John Bleasdale
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DVD Review: ‘Rush’
★★★☆☆ Roaring onto DVD and Blu-Ray this week comes Ron Howard’s Formula One racing drama Rush (2013), starring Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as James Hunt and Daniel Brühl as his arch-rival, Austrian driver Niki Lauda. Although bookended with a slightly broader context, the main thrust of the film is the 1976 F1 season which facilitated one…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘The Epic of Everest’
★★★★☆ In 1921, the first attempt to scale Everest was launched. The expedition was exploratory in nature rather than a full–on assault, and although it failed to reach the peak, pioneering photographer and filmmaker Captain John Noel came back with footage and stills so remarkable that further attempts on the summit were inevitable. In 1922,…
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DVD Review: ‘Leviathan’
★★★★☆ In what could be described as an annus mirabilis for documentaries, Leviathan (2012) stands out as a monstrous marvel; something to inspire terror, confusion and awe. Taking the relatively unpromising subject of industrial fishing of the North American coast – New Bedford, Massachusetts to be precise – filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel have…
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DVD Review: ‘The Act of Killing’
★★★★★ In Indonesia between 1965 and 1966, and following a failed coup attempt against the Sukharno government, military and paramilitary groups killed over 500,000 people in a bloody purge of suspected communists and ethnic Chinese. The killings paved the way for Suharto’s thirty-year military dictatorship and are still celebrated today as a foundational event in…
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Film Review: ‘Project Wild Thing’
★★☆☆☆ Documentarian David Bond is the worried father of two young children. Like many kids raised in the city, his kids spend most of their day indoors and an inordinate amount of time in front of screens of one type or another. Inspired by a growing trepidation, the filmmaker appoints himself the ‘Managing Director of…
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LFF 2013: ‘Locke’ review
★★★★★ Welshman Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) is a site manager for a major building project; a family man with two young sons who’re waiting for their father to return home to watch the big game. On the way back, Locke turns right instead of left and heads off the motorway. Having made a decision that…
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LFF 2013: ‘Philomena’ review
★★★☆☆ The Queen director Stephen Frears’ latest offering Philomena (2013), one of a plethora of Oscar hopefuls at this year’s BFI London Film Festival, is a heartfelt and nicely poised dramatisation following the true story of Philomena Lee. Its further bolstered by two classy performances from the ever-reliable, but utterly brilliant Judi Dench as the…
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LFF 2013: ‘L’intrepido’ review
★☆☆☆☆ Italian director Gianni Amelio returns to the fray with the hugely disappointing L’intrepido (A Lonely Hero, 2013), a hopelessly drab character study and alleged social satire. Celebrated comic actor Antonio Albanese plays Antonio, a Milanese Jack of all trades who subs for other workers when they need a few hours (or, indeed, a day…
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LFF 2013: ‘The Rooftops’ review
★★★☆☆ One of several African efforts to screen at this year’s London Film Festival, Merzak Allouache’s The Rooftops (2013) presents a day in the life of Algiers as seen through the lives of a wide cast of characters and from a distinctly privileged perspective. Playing like an Algerian Short Cuts, the drama recounts the various…
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LFF 2013: ‘The Police Officer’s Wife’ review
★★★☆☆ A follow-up to his own fascinating 2005 documentary Into the Silence, Philip Gröning’s LFF offering The Police Officer’s Wife (2013) is a demanding, stylistically eccentric and often gruelling exploration of the insidious cost of domestic violence, told in a series of 59 short chapters. A jigsaw puzzle is spotted in the kitchen early on,…
