Reviews
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DVD Review: Kikujiro
★★★★★ The mind of ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano is surely a singular and unique one. Last month saw the blu-ray release of his acclaimed crime melodrama Hana-bi, a compelling fable of violence, grief and nihilistic defiance. This month we are treated to his directorial follow up, Kikujiro, a comedy that is as similar to Hana-bi in…
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DVD Review: American Horror Project Vol. 1
★★★★☆ In the first volume of a new collection, Arrow Video remind us of the hidden gems of horror which are now all but forgotten. The first box set of this series comprises Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood, The Witch Who Came from the Sea, and The Premonition.Christopher Speeth’s Maltesta’s Carnival of Blood, concerns a family…
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Film Review: Orthodox
★★☆☆☆ Orthodox is a slow-burning British drama that never truly catches fire. It’s a pity that the story crafted by writer and director David Leon for his first feature, which certainly had the potential to be incendiary, has been transferred to a flimsy script that is further compounded by indecisive stabs at direction, leaving the…
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Film Review: Only the Dead
★★★☆☆ Michael Ware is a brave – if slightly insane – individual. That much is clear as you watch him shadow militants and run headlong into fire fights, with nothing but his camera to hand. He exudes the brand of charming insanity we’ve come to associate with Australians, but instead of riding killer waves or…
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Film Review: Mavis!
★★★☆☆ Music journalists must have a hard time describing the voice of an artist as exceptional and influential as Mavis Staples. From bassy depths soars a finely calibrated howitzer of sorrowful joy, erupting between mellow moments of syrupy-smooth soul. Perhaps Rolling Stone could say it better. A real firecracker, and fully deserving of the exclamation…
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Film Review: Finest Hours
★★★☆☆ Brace yourselves: it’s 1951 and the towering waves whipped up by a monumental nor’easter off the coast of Massachusetts are about to batter you into submission. Craig Gillespie’s The Finest Hours is a rip-roaring disaster epic from Disney based on real events: a rookie coast guard’s attempt to rescue the crew of a tanker…
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Film Review: Chronic
★★★★☆ Michel Franco’s assured English-language debut Chronic follows hospice nurse David (Tim Roth) and his care of terminally-ill patients. Initially, David appears efficient and compassionate and has an easy going rapport with his charges. He forges closes links with many of them and assiduously performs duties that family members cannot contemplate. It’s interesting to note…
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Film Review: Bone Tomahawk
★★★★☆ Since the 1970s it seems that every western is a revisionist western. Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Oscar winner Unforgiven is perhaps the apotheosis, but a certain Quentin Tarantino has now dipped his toe twice in the creek and the profane muddy genius of HBO’s Deadwood has also gone a long way to maintaining the validity…
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DVD Review: The Mutilator
★★☆☆☆ ‘By sword, By pick, By axe, Bye bye’. So goes the tagline of Buddy Cooper’s all-but-forgotten slasher, The Mutilator, an effective subtitle for a film that can’t decide whether it’s a black comedy or straight horror, and ends up being little of either. Originally titled Fall Break, The Mutilator is framed with a prologue…
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Film Review: Welcome to Leith
★★★☆☆ Leith is a small town in Grant County, North Dakota. Forgotten and dilapidated, it looks like – as one out-of-towner notes – “B-roll to the Walking Dead”. There are only 24 residents and one business open; the Mayor Ryan Schock drives the school bus and when a particularly numerous family relocate there, they joke…