DVD Review: ‘Arirang’ & ‘Crocodile’
★★★★☆ Released this week alongside his 1996 directorial debut Crocodile, South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk’s Arirang (2011) – the Golden Lion-winner’s first feature for...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ Released this week alongside his 1996 directorial debut Crocodile, South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk’s Arirang (2011) – the Golden Lion-winner’s first feature for...
★★★★☆ To say that Excision (2012) – the new horror from first time writer and director Richard Bates Jr., an expansion of his previous...
★★★☆☆ Names like Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov and Lev Kuleshov understandably dominate the column inches when it comes to the pioneering Soviet filmmakers of...
★★★☆☆ Currently gracing the silver screen with his turn as the morally dubious Martial in Jacques Audiard’s powerful melodrama Rust and Bone (2012), Bouli...
★★★★☆ Oscar-nominated for its engrossing original screenplay and featuring one of the year’s most impressive ensemble casts – including acting heavyweights Kevin Spacey, Paul...
★★★★☆ The surprise winner of last year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, T.J. Martin and Daniel Lindsay’s real-life underdog tale Undefeated (2011) proves...
★☆☆☆☆ Reuniting a portion of the cast from last year’s blockbusting female-oriented comedy Bridesmaids (2011), Friends with Kids (2011) sees Jennifer Westfeldt write, produce,...
★★★★☆ Notorious is a word frequently overused when describing controversial horror films. However, the term somehow feels completely justifiable in relation to The Evil...