Film Review: Bolshoi Babylon
★★★☆☆ Seen as Russia’s “secret weapon” by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, is it possible that the Bolshoi Ballet, a towering pillar of the nation’s...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★★ 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.
★★★★☆ 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.
★★★☆☆ Seen as Russia’s “secret weapon” by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, is it possible that the Bolshoi Ballet, a towering pillar of the nation’s...
★★☆☆☆ Initially coming off as a rather sharp and cheeky teen comedy, Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope prefers style over substance. What is set up in...
★☆☆☆☆ American playwright turned writer-director Leslye Headland received a fair amount of critical praise for her debut feature Bachelorette (2012), which saw a trio...
★★★★★ Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 classic Le Mépris deserves to be seen on the big screen. There, it can ravish the senses and connect with...
★★★★☆ Reinvention and familial turmoil have long been hallmarks of David O. Russell’s particular brand of knockabout cinema and his latest collaboration with Jennifer...
★☆☆☆☆ 2015 saw something of a Krays craze. Amid the brouhaha surrounding the Tom Hardy double act that was Brian Helgeland’s Legend, a plucky...
★★★☆☆ Tom Hooper has made several films about men playing roles. 2009’s The Damned United concerned the managerial exploits of Brian Clough (Martin Sheen),...
★★☆☆☆ Ramin Bahrani’s At Any Price (2012) has one of those bland three-word titles which bodes no good, yet the results are intriguing if...