Reviews
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Film Review: ‘The Square’
★★★★☆ Last summer, the 2011 Egyptian revolution was brought to UK screens through Ibrahim El-Batout’s sober drama Winter of Discontent (2012). It was a film that suffered from a significant sense of anachronism by the time of its release culminating, as it did, with the inherent hope of the now famous demonstrations in Tahrir Square.…
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Film Review: ‘The Railway Man’
★★☆☆☆ If it was the intention of The Railway Man (2013) director Jonathan Teplikzky to make a torturous film about torture, then hats off to him. On the other hand, if he was aiming to make an awards-worthy tale of romance, revenge and redemption, then Teplikzky and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce have failed and failed…
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Film Review: ‘Delivery Man’
★★☆☆☆ The death throes of the Vince Vaughn comedy vehicle must surely be imminent. The Internship (2013) certainly represented the sharpening of the reaper’s scythe, but Delivery Man (2013) may give it a brief stay of execution. Canadian director Ken Scott here remakes his successful French language indie Starbuck (2011), smoothing some of the rougher…
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Film Review: ‘After Tiller’
★★★☆☆ A long overdue foray into the hugely controversial debate on late-term abortion in the Unites States, Martha Shane and Lana Wilson’s After Tiller (2013) focuses upon the four remaining doctors willing to carry out the procedure. Following the assassination of their colleague Dr. George Tiller in 2009 at the hands of an anti-abortion activist,…
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Baftas 2014: ‘Gravity’ leads the nomination pack
Live-streamed to the film-adoring world earlier this morning at bafta.org, the official nominations for the 2014 Baftas were revealed by rising British stars Luke Evans and Helen McCrory to an expectant online community. A surprise to some, Alfonso Cuarón’s space opera Gravity leads the pack with eleven nominations, earning nods for Best Picture, Best British…
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DVD Review: ‘Lust in the Dust’
★★★☆☆ You’ve got to hand it to Arrow Video for assembling an increasingly bizarre collection of lost obscurities for new generations to enjoy. One such oddity is Paul Bartel’s Lust in the Dust (1985), a film which almost defies description. Starring Tab Hunter, Divine and Lainie Kazan, this amalgamation of western homage and sex farce…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Big Trouble in Little China’
★★★★☆ When reflecting on eighties action, it doesn’t take long for your mind to discharge aphorisms. Robust Yankee warriors annihilating endless swarms of natives to the clunking default setting of room-sized synthesisers. And then there was Kurt Russell: the buckled embodiment of the American Dream; the ‘Hell yeah’ guy, frequently playing the unassuming saviour of…
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DVD Review: ‘What Maisie Knew’
★★★☆☆ An adaptation of Henry James’ bestselling 1897 novel – uprooted to modern New York – Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s What Maisie Knew (2012) is a poignant tale of the gruelling pangs of divorce and how the separation of two mismatched, deeply insensitive individuals has both a positive and negative effect on its titular…
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DVD Review: ‘Upstream Colour’
★★★★★ Shane Carruth’s second feature, Upstream Colour (2013), following an almost decade-long gap since his debut, the enigmatic time-travel film Primer (2004), is a film that is difficult to adequately describe in the language normally used in film reviews. It defies genre conventions, features no recognisable stars, and has no central narrative hook. Upstream Colour…
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DVD Review: ‘The Taste of Money’
★★☆☆☆ No stranger to tales of domestic intrigue, South Korean director Im Sang-soo follows up 2010’s well-received The Housemaid with the not-so-well-received The Taste of Money (2012), an “erotic thriller” neither erotic nor thrilling. A soapy familial drama that gradually collapses under the weight of its own frothy suds, housemaids play a bit-part role in…