Reviews
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Film Review: ‘Crystal Fairy’
★★★☆☆ Representing something of a triumphant return to feature film roles, Michael Cera stars in Chilean director Sebastián Silva’s Crystal Fairy (2013) – or, to give it its full title, Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus and 2012 – a notable curio detailing the director’s peculiar experiences with narcotic enlightenment. After remaining relatively quiet since…
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DVD Review: ‘You’re Next’
★★★☆☆ Adam Wingard assembles mumblecore luminaries for one last soirée in You’re Next (2011). Though bursting with shocks and gore, this shrewd yet conceptually benign home invasion horror does struggle at times to traverse the derivative nature of the genre and articulate the social commentary it’s admirably attempting to communicate. After a mediocre fumble under…
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DVD Review: ‘Winter of Discontent’
★★☆☆☆ Given a somewhat ill-timed release last year by world cinema distributor New Wave Films, Ibrahim El-Batout’s Winter of Discontent (2012) is a passionate, if tonally muddled take on the anti-Mubarak Egyptian uprising of 2011. With Mubarak now released from prison after serving his sentence and protests against those who replaced the former president ongoing…
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DVD Review: ‘Riddick’
★★★☆☆ The return of interplanetary badass Richard B. Riddick may well have come as a surprise to anyone who saw 2004’s sluggish sequel The Chronicles of Riddick and witnessed its subsequent below-par performance at the box office. Undeterred, franchise star Vin Diesel (no doubt encouraged by the sizeable returns from his endlessly money-spinning Fast &…
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DVD Review: ‘Promised Land’
★★★★☆ Given the seasonal vagaries of critical favour and the fickle nature of theatrical distribution, it would be a futile exercise to spend time second guessing why Gus Van Sant’s The Promised Land (2012) failed to make the impression it should have on its UK release last year. Adapted by its stars Matt Damon and…
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DVD Review: ‘Museum Hours’
★★★★☆ A beautifully observant, heartwarming and compassionate film, Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours (2012) was one of last year’s quiet revelations. After a youth spent travelling with rock bands across Europe, Johann (played by the reserved yet soothingly charismatic Bobby Sommer) has now decided to have his own share of ‘quiet time’, working as a guard…
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DVD Review: ‘Kelly + Victor’
★★★★☆ Love hurts in more ways than one in Kieran Evans’ Kelly + Victor (2012), an impressive low-budget UK indie which, despite a couple of narrative missteps, still manages to be an absorbing and passionate look at sexuality and the need for connection – however extreme. Victor (Julian Morris) meets Kelly (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) in a loved-up…
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DVD Review: ‘InRealLife’
★★★☆☆ Beeban Kidron’s topical documentary InRealLife (2013), newly available on DVD this week, tackles the complexities of the internet from many a disturbing angle. The director exercises her skill as a documentarian, with the many teenagers interviewed in the film candidly revealing their most intimate thoughts to the invisible wall. But as her doc points…
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DVD Review: ‘The Great Beauty’
★★★★☆ Italy’s ‘Eternal City’ has long found itself the focus of cinema’s expressive lens, with Rome often proving the life-blood of films set there by masters including Rossellini, De Sica and Fellini. New to DVD and Blu-ray, The Great Beauty (2013) sees Paolo Sorrentino return to the Italian capital after a sojourn in Ireland and…
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DVD Review: ‘The Frozen Ground’
★★☆☆☆ Based on the grisly case of serial killer Robert Hansen, Nicolas Cage and John Cusack star in Scott Walker’s functional yet largely forgettable thriller The Frozen Ground (2013). State trooper Jack Halcombe (Cage) is two weeks away from retirement, at which point he plans to move away from the city of Anchorage with his…