Reviews
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DVD Review: ‘The Lady Assassin’
★★★☆☆ Martial arts cinema never fails to surprise. Take, for instance, the visually stunning, high-kicking Vietnamese period adventure The Lady Assassin (2013). In this garish, cartoon-esque adventure – starring Kim Dzung, Tang Thanh Ha, Thanh Hang, Thai-Hoa Le, Diem My and Ngoc Quyen – director Quang Dung Nguyen and writer Ngo Quan Dung have fashioned…
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DVD Review: ‘Journal de France’
★★★☆☆ “Taking photographs with a view camera is a world apart,” explains celebrated Gallic photographer and filmmaker Raymond Depardon as he clicks his shutter. It’s through this deliberate medium that he has chosen to capture a later-life nationwide trek to experience the homeland that he has long neglected in favour of adventure overseas. This road…
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DVD Review: ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’
★★★☆☆ Piggybacking on the phenomenal popularity of young adult fiction adaptations like the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises, Gary Ross’ revision of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games yielded strong praise from critics with equally impressive box office figures to match. The mammoth task of helming the sequel, Catching Fire (2013), was entrusted to Constantine (2005)…
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DVD Review: ‘The Counsellor’
★★★☆☆ It would certainly be tempting to dismiss completely British director Ridley Scott’s drug trafficking drama The Counsellor (2013) and write a hell-for-leather kicking of the film, as many already have. Likewise, it would be relatively easy to position yourself outside of the choir and herald it as a masterpiece that will, in years to…
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DVD Review: ‘Blue Is the Warmest Colour’
★★★★☆ Discourse surrounding Tunisian-French director Abdellatif Kechiche’s adaptation of Julie Maroh’s eponymous graphic novel Blue Is the Warmest Colour quickly shifted from festival sensation to media sensationalism. Chided for exploring lesbian sexuality through masculine subjectivity to fastidious critics questioning Kechiche’s ‘demanding’ directorial approach, Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) has become one of the most…
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DVD Review: ‘The Big Melt’
★★★★☆ Sparks fly and molten steel bubbles in Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and director Martin Wallace’s poetic homage to Sheffield’s steel industry, The Big Melt (2013). Images and clips are welded together to Cocker’s eloquent, soaring score for a spellbinding film which opened last year’s DocFest, whilst also having been designed to commemorate 100 years…
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DVD Review: ‘1: Life on the Limit’
★★★☆☆ Following the roaring success of Senna (2010) and Ron Howard’s asphalt drama Rush (2013), Paul Crowder’s Formula One doc 1: Life on the Limit (2013) provides a more comprehensive history of the sport and examines in particular the tension between the glamour of danger and the human cost. The cards are slapped on the table from…
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Film Review: ‘Zero Theorem’
★★☆☆☆ There are many charming discrepancies in Terry Gilliam’s creative output, but one miscalculation lingers; is it us or him who has lost the plot? Are we too wired into our own pragmatic nightmares to appreciate his trademark brand of sociopolitical lampooning? Or is his genius simply burning out? A decade of ‘hmmms’ have left…
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Film Review: ‘Under the Skin’
★★★★★ Like the predatory alien siren of his latest offering, British director Jonathan Glazer is not one to be rushed. It was just short of a decade ago that his previous film, the category-defying Golden Lion nominee Birth (2004), split critical consensus at Venice so comprehensibly. He now returns with Under the Skin (2013), a…
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Film Review: ‘The Stag’
★★★☆☆ You’d perhaps be forgiven for thinking that John Butler’s The Stag (2013), co-written and starring Peter McDonald, might be in the vein of Bridesmaids (2011) or Bachelorette (2012) before it. What we actually get is a surprisingly tender Irish comedy, which traverses the depths of modern masculine identity, whilst aping the tropes of the…