Reviews
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DVD Review: ‘Drinking Buddies’
★★☆☆☆ The American mumblecore movement has found itself at a crossroads of late it would seem, ironically caught in its own adolescent identity crisis. Whilst many of its alumni such as the Duplass brothers and Lynn Shelton have started taking life seriously, growing up and pursuing other creative avenues, the sub-genre now appears to be…
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DVD Review: ‘Age of Uprising’
★★☆☆☆ Following the runaway success of Danish director Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair (2012) a couple of years back, another period European drama of revolt and revenge starring the magnetic Mads Mikkelsen would undoubtedly have seemed like an excellent idea. Somewhat regrettably, Arnaud des Pallières’ Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas (2013), adapted from the Heinrich…
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Film Review: ‘Rome, Open City’
★★★★★ By 1944, Italy’s film industry was virtually non-existent. Funding in the arts was severed to pool resources in the reconstruction of the country’s war-torn landscape. Yet it were these financial obstructions that inspired one of the most important movements in 20th century cinema. Mere months after the Nazi withdrawal from Rome, Roberto Rossellini and…
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Film Review: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’
★★★★☆ Wes Anderson has long been a purveyor of painstakingly detailed worlds; heightened realities from which tastes and textures seem to leap off the screen. His latest offering, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), is no different and stars a wonderful Ralph Fiennes as rakish concierge M. Gustave. The aroma of his cologne, L’Air de Panache,…
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Film Review: ‘300: Rise of an Empire’
★★☆☆☆ Despite being an orgy of blood and testosterone, there was something refreshing in the depiction of ancient Greece in Zack Snyder’s 300 (2006). Cinema has a propensity for curbing the outlandish elements of Hellenic mythology – by doing away with it altogether, a la Troy (2004), or invoking grittiness as with Clash of the Titans…
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DVD Review: ‘The Patience Stone’
★★★☆☆ It takes a brave director to tackle a film set mainly in one room, the type of set-up usually far better suited to theatre than cinema. It makes more sense upon learning that director Atiq Rahimi is also the author of the novel The Patience Stone (2012) was adapted from. Perhaps then, the kudos…
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DVD Review: ‘Gravity’
★★★☆☆ Gravity (2013) plays on that classic dramatic conflict – man versus the elements – exploited by Alfonso Cuarón in his Oscar-winning and visually arresting film about two astronauts lost in space. Sandra Bullock plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a medical engineer on her first NASA mission, accompanied by veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney). When…
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DVD Review: ‘For Those in Peril’
★★★★☆ An hypnotic fable of guilt and redemption, Paul Wright’s ethereal Scottish drama For Those in Peril (2013) tells the story of Aaron (George MacKay), a troubled young man who’s the sole survivor of a fishing accident that claimed the lives of his brother and five other crew members. Unable to recall the incident and convinced…
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Film Review: ‘We Are What We Are’
★★★★☆ Jim Mickle’s We Are What We Are (2013) – his follow-up to blood-soaked vampire drama Stake Land (2010) – is so convincing that it almost makes the case for the horror remake as a viable, rich art form in and of itself. Not only is it a much better film than Jorge Michel Grau’s…
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Film Review: ‘Non-Stop’
★★★☆☆ Action movies are typically a young man’s genre but an older man’s game. The real tough cookies have been thickened by years of experience, driven to solitude by guilt, and are embittered by the system they have operated in for too long. At the age of 61, Liam Neeson continues to rebrand himself as…