DVD Review: ‘Eyes Without a Face’
★★★★☆ If you only know Eyes Without a Face (1960) from the Billy Idol rock ballad, then you are in for a treat. Georges...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ If you only know Eyes Without a Face (1960) from the Billy Idol rock ballad, then you are in for a treat. Georges...
★★★★☆ “Heaven forbid if he ever comes back,” intones a village elder as Martin Lepiš, otherwise known as ‘Dragon’ (Radovan Lukavský), is led, restrained,...
★★★★★ City Lights (1931) begins with a scene of splendour as the gathered dignitaries and the jubilant crowd attend the unveiling of a new...
★★★☆☆ Commonly referred to as the ‘Father Knows Best Trilogy’, Ang Lee’s first three films are notable primarily as an introduction to key themes...
★★☆☆☆ Alan Rickman’s second stint as director yields mixed results wrapped up in a stylish French bow, A Little Chaos (2014). It’s a beautiful...
★★★★☆ This Sundance award-winning documentary recalls English poet Philip Larkin’s This Be the Verse: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad…” Then again,...
★★★★☆ Iranian Mohsen Makhmalbaf opened last year’s Venice Orizzonti sidebar with The President (2014), which attains the open force of a parable while at...
★★☆☆☆ “A boring woman sick of her boring life is not boring,” claims Martin (Fabrice Luhini), the nosey French neighbour of Gemma Arterton’s titular...