Reviews
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Film Review: ‘Black Gold’
★☆☆☆☆ Professing to shed some cinematic light on the ‘Yellow Belt’ oil disputes of the early 20th century, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Black Gold (2011) presented a fantastic opportunity for the construction of a complex, sweeping Arabian epic not seen since David Lean’s 1962 masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia. Sadly, what we get instead is a stultifyingly stupid,…
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Film Review: ‘Rampart’
★★★★☆ Few actors have a résumé as diverse as Woody Harrelson’s, and even less have managed to leave a long-running sitcom and avoid the perils of audience over-familiarity and typecasting. Since Cheers wrapped, Harrelson has worked with the likes of Oliver Stone, Terrence Malick, the Coen Brothers and Robert Altman, and his turn as a corrupt…
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Film Review: ‘Safe House’
★★☆☆☆ Safe House (2012), the new action thriller from director Daniel Espinosa – starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds – spends most of its 117-minute running time much like its central characters – tearing madly around, making a lot of noise and not really getting very far.CIA rookie Matt Weston (Reynolds) looks after an agency…
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Berlin 2012: ‘Marley’ review
★★★☆☆ Having proven an insurmountable task for masters of the medium in the past (perhaps notably Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker), Life in a Day (2011) director Kevin Macdonald brings the life of the late reggae icon Bob Marley to the screen in new documentary Marley (2012), which premiered at this year’s Berlinale.Crucially, Macdonald chooses…
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DVD Review: ‘The Well Digger’s Daughter’
★★★☆☆ French actor/director Daniel Auteuil’s The Well Digger’s Daughter (2011) stands as one of the most surprisingly beautiful films of recent times – with each frame resembling an Impressionist painting – and as a consequence is perhaps most effective as a commercial for the French countryside rather than a stunning piece of cinema.The film’s simple…
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DVD Review: ‘The Student Comedies’ (The BFI Ozu Collection)
★★★★☆ The Student Comedies consist of four incredibly rare films by the acclaimed Japanese director Yasujirô Ozu. This lovingly restored collection is part of the BFI’s ongoing venture to release all 32 of the surviving films he made for the Shochiku Studio. This 2-disc box set finally brings Ozu’s student-themed silent comedies to DVD for…
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Film Review: ‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’
★☆☆☆☆ Directed by Brit Stephen Daldry and adapted from the 2005 novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer, US drama Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) was one of the surprise inclusions of this year’s Best Picture Academy Award nominee list – and rightly so. Beneath its emotional subject matter and 9/11-centric narrative…
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DVD Review: ‘Miss Bala’
★★★☆☆ A critical hit upon its BFI London Film Festival appearance last year (though predictably fairing less well at the UK box office), Gerardo Naranjo’s Mexican thriller Miss Bala (2011) gets a DVD release this week thanks to distributors Metrodome. At times stark and gruelling, yet at others laborious and overdrawn, Miss Bala marginally falls…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Her Private Hell’
★★★☆☆ Finally finding its way onto DVD and Blu-ray thanks to the BFI’s Flipside label, Norman J. Warren’s 1967 erotic drama Her Private Hell deserves recognition for its confrontational stance, bravely taking up the mantle of the UK’s first narrative sex film. Below some occasional messy editing and hastily-dubbed dialogue lies a sensual, sophisticated work,…
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DVD Review: ‘Warrior’
★★★★☆ Those perplexed by grizzled mumbler Nick Nolte’s nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category at this year’s Academy Awards may well be among those who missed his performance in last year’s remarkably good MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) drama Warrior (2011), directed by Gavin O’Connor and starring Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton as two brothers…