Cannes 2013: ‘Borgman’ review
★★★★☆ One of numerous films to make its way to London from the Cannes, Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman (2013) is the darkest of dark...
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
Cannes 2013: ‘As I Lay Dying’ review
★★☆☆☆ Following on from Baz Luhrmann’s tipsy take on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age classic The Great Gatsby, actor/director James Franco offers Cannes the...
Cannes 2013: ‘All Is Lost’ review
★★★★★ American director J.C. Chandor first made a name for himself with 2011 talkathon Margin Call, which strove to present the 07-08 financial crisis...
Cannes 2013: ‘Only God Forgives’ review
★★★☆☆ Following the success of Un Certain Regard favourite Drive back in 2011, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn returns to the Croisette with Only...
Cannes 2013: ‘Grigris’ review
★★★☆☆ Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s latest feature, Cannes contender Grigris (2013), recounts a tale of hope against despair in the director’s native African country of Chad. It...
Cannes 2013: ‘Ain’t Them Bodies Saints’
★★☆☆☆ “There’s just no telling” says Bob (Casey Affleck) close to the end of David Lowery’s Texas-based criminal romance Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013),...
Cannes 2013: ‘The Great Beauty’ review
★★★☆☆ Il Divo and This Must Be the Place director Paolo Sorrentino returns to Italian cinema (with a capital ‘I’ and a capital ‘C’)...
Cannes 2013: ‘Honey’ review
★★☆☆☆ Italian-Greek actress Valeria Golino – perhaps most familiar to international audiences as Tom Cruise’s girlfriend in Rain Man – makes her directorial debut...
