Reviews
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DVD Review: ‘Outside the Law’ (‘Hors la loi’)
★★★★☆ Rachid Bouchareb’s Palme d’Or-nominated Outside the Law (Hors la loi, 2010) is much more than a fictionalised and reactionary account of the oppressed and the oppressor; it deals with a subject that is deeply embedded in the history of French/Algerian relations, arguably opening the door for the issue to be discussed more openly in…
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DVD Review: ‘The Colour of Pomegranates’
★★★★☆ Armenian director Sergi Paradjanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates (1968), starring Sofiko Chiaureli, is not what you would call a traditionally entertaining film. A more appropriate set of terms would be, intriguing, intelligent and challenging. The film does not possess a conventional plot, although it loosely follows the life of 19th Century Armenian bard Sagat…
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Film Review: The Skin I Live In
★★★★★ From acclaimed director Pedro Almoldóvar, and starring Antonio Banderas and upcoming talent Elena Anaya comes The Skin I Live In (2011),an incredibly beautiful based on the novel Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet. The Skin I Live In perfectly blends sci-fi, horror, thriller and drama in such a deft way that audiences will only be left…
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Film Review: ‘One Day’
★★★★★ Film critics can be such heartless bastards at times. I’ve read many assassinations of One Day (2011) in the last 24-hours, and although I expected lots of whining and over-intellectualised prose, I was hoping Lone Scherfig’s follow up to An Education (2009) would have gained more favourable reviews.I have one simple rule when it…
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Film Review: ‘Conan the Barbarian’
★★★☆☆ Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa’s rendering of Robert E. Howard’s iconic ‘sword and sorcery’ hero Conan the Barbarian (2011) is lavished with all the snazzy technology of the modern day as he is thrust into finely constructed animated worlds, even fighting computer animated foes. In addition, the 2011 film, directed by Marcus Nispel…
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London International Animation Festival 2011: Preview
“People think of animation only doing things where people are dancing around and doing a lot of histrionics,” Pixar director Brad Bird once said, “but animation is not a genre. A Western is a genre! Animation is an art form, and it can do any genre.” If ever you wanted proof of this statement, the…
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DVD Review: ‘Winnie the Pooh’
★★★★☆ That willy-nilly, silly old bear Winnie the Pooh (2011) is back in a brand new animated adventure from Disney, this time boasting a great voice cast including Jim Cummings (voicing both Pooh and Tigger), John Cleese and a rather funky soundtrack from indie actor/singer, Zooey Deschanel.We join Pooh Bear (Cummings) and friends in the…
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DVD Review: ‘Whisky Galore!’
★★★★☆ With Alec Guinness duo The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955) fronting Ealing Studio’s DVD rerelease list its easy to forget Whisky Galore!, Alexander Mackendrick’s first film and the one that helped put the company on the map back in 1949.Based on the true story of a shipwreck that sank with 50,000…
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DVD Review: ‘La Jetée’ & ‘Sans Soleil’
★★★☆☆ Director Chris Marker has been working in documentary film for the best part of 60 years, but his best-known film remains the 27-minute sci-fi short La Jetée (1962), rereleased on DVD on 22 August alongside Sans Soleil (1983).Constructed almost entirely from still photos and cheaply-recorded sound effects, La Jetée follows a World War III…
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Film Review: ‘Cowboys & Aliens’
★★★☆☆ Helmed by Iron Man 1 & 2 director Jon Favreau and starring Hollywood heavyweights Harrison Ford and 007 Daniel Craig alongside TRON: Legacy’s (2010) Olivia Wilde, Cowboys & Aliens (2011) comes to show us what could have happened if a bunch of belligerent extraterrestrials landed in the middle of the Wild West, where the…
