Film Review: ‘The Book of Life’
★★☆☆☆ Experienced animator Jorge R. Gutierrez teams up with fan-favourite producer Guillermo Del Toro for his directorial debut The Book of Life (2014), a...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★☆☆☆ Experienced animator Jorge R. Gutierrez teams up with fan-favourite producer Guillermo Del Toro for his directorial debut The Book of Life (2014), a...
★★★★☆ Since Australian director Jennifer Kent’s debut feature, The Babadook (2014) premièred at this year’s Sundance Film Festival there has been a tremendous hubbub...
★★★★☆ Since its bow in 1987, Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical black comedy, Withnail and I, has become a bona fide cult-classic. For years audiences have...
★★★★☆ Gérard Depardieu is barnstorming as the outrageous subject of Abel Ferrara’s lurid Welcome to New York (2014), inspired by the scandal that ended...
★★★★☆ After the critically adored The Kid with a Bike (2011) saw celebrated Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne take a softer approach to...
★★★★☆ Almost forty years after its first release, Shivers (1975) is still difficult to watch. Even for a director as renowned for his bizarre...
★★★☆☆ In the House of Mouse’s third attempt at reinventing a classic fairytale as a live action adventure, director Robert Stromberg brings us a...
★★★☆☆ After dabbling satisfyingly with horror in his three features so far, director Jim Mickle adopts a decidedly different pace with Cold in July...