Venice 2013: ‘Kill Your Darlings’ review
★★☆☆☆ With his debut feature Kill Your Darlings (2013), premièred at the Venice Film Festival in the Venice Days sidebar, John Krokidas has assembled...
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
Venice 2013: ‘Under the Skin’ review
★★★★★ Following an almost decade-long absence – his last film, the controversial Birth, was released in 2004 – director Jonathan Glazer returns with his...
Venice 2013: ‘The Zero Theorem’ review
★★★☆☆ It’s been a long time since Terry Gilliam made an unambiguously great film. Flash floods, the death of a lead actor and shrinking...
Venice 2013: ‘Tom at the Farm’ review
★★★☆☆ Filmmaking prodigy Xavier Dolan directs and stars in Venice pick Tom at the Farm (2013), an absurd, blackly funny thriller set in rural...
Venice 2013: ‘Parkland’ review
★★☆☆☆ In competition at this year’s Venice, Peter Landesman’s debut film Parkland (2013) is an efficient and occasionally intriguing reconstruction of the events in...
Venice 2013: ‘The Wind Rises’ review
★★★★☆ Japanese animator extraordinaire and Venice favourite Hayao Miyazaki – who today announced his retirement from feature filmmaking – makes his final appearance in...
Venice 2013: ‘Night Moves’ review
★★★☆☆ Following her 2010 revisionist western Meek’s Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt is back in competition at Venice with Night Moves (2013), an offbeat thriller about...
Venice 2013: ‘Child of God’ review
★★★★☆ Hot on the heels of his previous feature-length offering, Cannes select As I Lay Dying, James Franco made his directorial bow on the...
