Blu-ray Review: ‘Sisters’
★★★☆☆ Made in 1973, a whole three years before his breakthrough Stephen King adaptation Carrie, Brian De Palma’s Sisters (previously released as Blood Sisters...
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
DVD Review: ‘Fill the Void’
★★★★☆ Tradition and duty are the themes of Fill the Void (2012), a tightly observed family drama and Rama Burshtein’s debut feature. Set in...
Film Review: ‘My Stuff’
★☆☆☆☆ Following a breakup with his girlfriend, My Stuff (2013) director Petri Luukkainen decides to put all of his worldly possessions into storage and...
DVD Review: ‘Fire in the Blood’
★★★★★ Crusading documentaries have now become a common sub-genre: from Michael Moore’s slick polemics and eco-worrier Al Gore’s persuasive An Inconvenient Truth (2006) to...
Film Review: ‘The Robber’
★★★☆☆ “What are you looking forward to doing on your release?” Johann Rettenberger (Andreas Lust) is asked by his parole officer at the beginning...
DVD Review: ‘The Counsellor’
★★★☆☆ It would certainly be tempting to dismiss completely British director Ridley Scott’s drug trafficking drama The Counsellor (2013) and write a hell-for-leather kicking...
DVD Review: ‘1: Life on the Limit’
★★★☆☆ Following the roaring success of Senna (2010) and Ron Howard’s asphalt drama Rush (2013), Paul Crowder’s Formula One doc 1: Life on the Limit (2013)...
Film Review: ‘Plot for Peace’
★★★★☆ On 5 December 2013, former ANC leader, past South African president and the world’s most famous political prisoner, Nelson Mandela, died following a...
