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...
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
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,...
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...
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...
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,...
LFF 2013: ‘Tracks’ review
★★★☆☆ In 1975, Robyn Davidson arrived in a remote Australian town with a crazy ambition to cross the desert to the ocean using wild...
Blu-ray Review: ‘The Lonely Wife’ & ‘The Coward’
★★★★★ The years 1964-5 saw the release of Satyajit Ray’s arguable masterpiece The Lonely Wife (Charulata) and the smaller variation on a theme, The...
Venice 2013: ‘Sacro GRA’ wins the Golden Lion
The Venice Golden Lion returned to the host country after fifteen years this evening with Gianfranco Rosi’s biography of a Rome ring road, Sacro...
