Reviews
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Repo Man’
★★★★☆ Rereleased on Blu-ray under Eureka’s Masters of Cinema label, 1984 cult classic Repo Man is the debut film of actor, writer and director Alex Cox, and become a sleeper hit amongst sci-fi fans upon release thanks to its hugely entertaining mix of surreal humour and light satire, engaging everything from conspiracy theories to aliens.…
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Film Review: ‘If Not Us, Who?’
★★☆☆☆ Purporting to present a previously unseen story in the build up to the 1968 West German protests and formation of Baader-Meinhof movement, Andres Veigel’s If Not Us, Who? (Wer wenn nicht wir, 2011) is a well-shot, thoroughly researched piece that unfortunately relays little actual historical information to its audience. Nominated for the prestigious Golden…
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Film Review: ‘Carancho’ (‘The Vulture’)
★★★☆☆ From Palme d’Or-nominated director Pablo Trapero and starring one of the most recognisable faces in South American cinema, Ricardo Darin (The Secret in Their Eyes [2009]), Carancho (2010) is a morality tale with a twisted noir mentality – an unconventional romance set against a repugnant and deeply disparaging depiction of Buenos Aires.Sosa (Darin) is…
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Film Review: ‘Michael’
★★★★☆ How the Daily Mail are yet to rise in uproar against Markus Schleinzer’s directorial debut Michael (2011) is anyone’s guess. The Austrian filmmaker’s first feature is a markedly cold, matter-of-fact depiction of five months in the life of a practising paedophile who has imprisoned a 10-year-old boy in his sound-proofed basement. It’s also one of…
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Film Review: ‘Wanderlust’
★★★☆☆ Role Models (2008) director David Wain, returns with the much funnier and more entertaining Wanderlust (2012), which reunites comic actor Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston for the first time since Friends. Young couple George (Rudd) and Linda (Aniston) live in a tiny apartment in the West Village, New York, carrying out their busy urban…
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Film Review: ‘This Means War’
★★★☆☆ Few directors have been derided by critics as much as This Means War (2012) helmsman McG. They justifiably gave the man a kicking for the below par Charlie’s Angels (2000) and it’s godforsaken sequel Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003). Yet although Terminator Salvation (2009) was no oil painting, the call from some quarters to…
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Film Review: ‘Project X’
★☆☆☆☆ From producer Todd Phillips (The Hangover [2009], Old School [2003]) and first time director Nima Nourizadeh, Project X (2012) is a found footage-style examination of high school culture that successfully manages to sink to the lowest depths of entertainment.The moment Project X’s destructive catalyst Costa (Oliver Cooper) declares to the camera during the film’s…
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DVD Review: ‘Welcome to the Rileys’
★★☆☆☆ For those acquainted with the secretly R-rated, PG-lacquered wording of Kristen Stewart’s Bella Swan in the dreaded Twilight series; brace yourselves for her thoroughly soapless mouth in Jake Scott’s indie effort Welcome to the Rileys (2010).Stewart plays a young, feisty but damaged stripper who meets an innocent, but unhappily married man in the form…
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DVD Review: ‘The Front Line’
★★★★☆ Towards the end of the Korean War, high up on Aerok Hill, soldiers continue their fierce fighting in an ultimate battle for an insignificant piece of land. In a strategic move to determine the new border between the two Koreas, North and South both sacrifice millions of lives. Hun Jang’s The Front Line (2011)…
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DVD Review: ‘The Conformist’
★★★★★ Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970) is one of the fiercest denunciations of the moral paralysis and intellectual cowardice that marked the fascist era in Italy. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Marcello Clerici, an upper class Italian who has agreed to collaborate in a plot to assassinate a former professor who has fled fascism to live in…