Film Review: ‘Human Capital’
★★☆☆☆ The financial crisis has hit Italy particularly hard and laid bare the structural defects of a country in serious need of reform, to...
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
Film Review: ‘Pride’
★★★★☆ Following the minor disappointment of Ken Loach’s somewhat lethargic Jimmy’s Hall (2014), left-leaning political activism returns to UK cinemas, but this time in...
Venice 2014: Andersson’s ‘Pigeon’ is a Golden Lion
Surprisingly given the encroachment of the Toronto International Film Festival and the ongoing rivalry with Cannes, the Venice Film Festival still manages to provide...
Venice 2014: ‘The Postman’s White Nights’
★★★★☆ If Anton Chekhov had been a reality show creator, Andrei Konchalovsky’s The Postman’s White Nights (2014) might well have been the result. Playing...
Venice 2014: ‘La Trattativa’ review
★★☆☆☆ During the early nineties a series of bombings rocked the cities of Italy. The violence was a response by the Mafia to a...
Venice 2014: ‘Jackie & Ryan’ review
★★☆☆☆ Returning to the Venice Lido in the Orizzonti sidebar after her mildly gripping thriller Texas Killing Fields premièred here back in 2011, Ami...
Venice 2014: ‘Court’ review
★★★★☆ Showing in Venice’s Orizzonti sidebar, Chaitanya Tamhane’s quietly brilliant Court (2014) takes an individual court case and, through following its laborious labyrinthine process,...
Venice 2014: ‘Burying the Ex’ review
★☆☆☆☆ Showing out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, Joe Dante’s zom-com Burying the Ex (2014) is an unfunny undead comedy that in...
