Reviews
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Film Review: Arabian Nights: Volume Two
★★★★☆ The second part in the Arabian Nights saga slowly but surely raises a middle finger to the Portuguese establishment. As its subtitle suggests the mood moves toward the disconsolate, the desperate and the disenfranchised. There’s a weary helplessness to The Desolate One which makes its overall tone far more sombre than the amusing oddity…
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Film Review: Miles Ahead
★★★★☆ 2004 must seem like a long time ago for Don Cheadle – whose lead performance in that year’s Hotel Rwanda won wide acclaim for its humanity in a film portraying very knotty, harrowing matter. In recent years, his film work has mostly been limited to output from the Marvel stable, so it’s little surprise…
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Film Review: Louder Than Bombs
★★★★☆ More often than not, men fall somewhere between ill-equipped and completely inept when it comes to sharing, processing and discussing their emotions. This is duly amplified when it involves coping with the unexpected loss of a loved one under traumatic circumstances. Louder Than Bombs, Joachim Trier’s first foray into English-language filmmaking, demonstrates a similar…
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Film Review: The Divide
★★★☆☆ It’s safe to say that Katharine Round and Gordon Gekko would not see eye to eye if asked whether greed was good. The British filmmaker’s subtly profound documentary, The Divide, laments the growing inequality between the super rich and all us plebs below them. Round’s film is yet another rallying cry for the masses…
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Film Review: Desert Dancer
★★☆☆☆ It’s all the more disappointing for a cinemagoer when a film meant to delight in a fellow performance art falls limply flat on its face. Paired with a weakly executed, western-articulated perspective on the constraints of Iranian society, Richard Raymond’s debut feature Desert Dancer is a lifeless, contrived and remarkably unengaging rallying cry for…
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Film Review: Bastille Day
★★☆☆☆ British director James Watkins has labelled his latest big screen effort a fun, Friday night cinematic ride. Aspiring to Walter Hill’s 1982 unorthodox buddy movie 48 Hrs, which starred Nick Nolte and a baby-faced Eddie Murphy as cop and con respectively, Bastille Day represents a marked change in direction after acclaimed horror-chillers Eden Lake…
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Film Review: Arabian Nights: Volume One
★★★★☆ Once in a blue moon a film will come along that defies criticism, understanding and any conventional sense of logic. But left to percolate and ruminate in the back of one’s mind for long enough it proves to be something quite brilliant. With Arabian Nights, a six-hour epic split into three distinct volumes, Portuguese…
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Cannes 2016: Palme d’Or lineup announced
The eagerly awaited Official Selection for this year’s 69th Cannes Film Festival (11-22 May) was announced in Paris on Thursday morning. As previously revealed, Woody Allen will get things underway with Cafe Society, a period offering starring Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg. Meanwhile, highlights of this year’s Palme d’Or race include new films from international…
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Film Review: The Jungle Book
★★★★☆ Remakes can often find themselves balancing precariously on a knife’s edge. Indulge in too much reverence to the original and you aren’t innovating enough. Abandon what made the first rendition such a success and audiences won’t have that satisfying trip down memory lane. Jon Favreau has an even harder task because his latest film…
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Film Review: Eye in the Sky
★★★★☆ It’s one of the most oldest moral dilemmas in the book: if you could save dozens of lives by taking that of an innocent, would you do it? Could you sleep at night, knowing that you were responsible for depriving someone of a future? This conundrum gets a cutting-edge makeover in Eye in the…