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.

John Bleasdale / Reviews
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.

John Bleasdale / Reviews
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 / Reviews

John Bleasdale

Venice 2012: To the Wonder review

★★☆☆☆ Acclaimed director Terrence Malick’s latest film, To the Wonder, screened at the 69th Venice Film Festival and was subsequently greeted with a mixed chorus of both boos and applause.