DVD Review: ‘Fast & Furious 7’
★★★☆☆ The (reputedly) final instalment of the flashy franchise that’s risen to prominence in pop culture over the past fifteen years is every bit...
Film Reviews & More
Most Recent. In Reviews.
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.
Reviews
DVD Review: ‘Bait’
★☆☆☆☆ Of all its numerous misdemeanours, the most heinous that Dominic Brunt’s vile Bait (2014) commits is its attempt to convince you that it...
Film Review: ‘The Second Mother’
★★★★☆ Anna Muylaert’s heartwarming The Second Mother (2015) stars Regina Casé as Val, a live-in housekeeper for a wealthy family in São Paulo, has helped bring...
Film Review: ‘Ricki and the Flash’
★★★☆☆ What does a Jonathan Demme film look like? From features to docs to television, he has an old studio player’s utilitarian work ethic;...
Film Review: ‘Miss Julie’
★★☆☆☆ All the pieces seemed to be in place for Liv Ullmann’s take on Miss Julie (2014), Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s examination of class and...
Film Review: ‘Dope’
★★★☆☆ Produced by Forest Whitaker, this teenage coming-of-age caper set in Inglewood, California involves the usual hood narrative trifecta of drugs, gangs, and crime...
Film Review: ‘Closed Curtain’
★★★★★ Closed Curtain (2013), Jafar Panahi’s symbolically charged follow-up to his critically acclaimed This Is Not a Film (2012), is about state repression, censorship,...
Film Review: ‘Cartel Land’
★★★★☆ Perhaps this year’s most important documentary, Cartel Land (2015) offers a too-close-for-comfort, ground-level look at vigilante groups who attempt to thwart murderous Mexican...
