Reviews
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DVD Review: ‘Submarine’
★★★★☆ The feature debut of British comedian Richard Ayoade (best known for his roles in The Mighty Boosh, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace – which he also directed – and The IT Crowd), the darkly funny coming-of-age drama Submarine (2010) was arguably the surprise package of last year’s BFI London Film Festival.Adapted from the 2008 Joe Dunthorne…
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Film Review: ‘Arrietty’
★★☆☆☆ Studio Ghibli is a name familiar to many, conjuring to the mind titles such as Princess Mononoke (1997), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and My Neighbour Tortoro (1988). Their latest endeavour is an adaptation of Mary Norton’s children’s classic The Borrowers, re-titled for modern audiences as Arrietty (2010).The story follows 14-year-old Arrietty and the rest…
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Film Review: ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’
★☆☆☆☆ I have never really been comfortable with Captain America – star of new Marvel blockbuster Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) – as a superhero. Unlike Batman, Spider-Man or the majority of his The Avengers [2012] posse, there is no real edge to his character. He is simply a soldier with disturbing jingoistic attitudes,…
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DVD Review: ‘No Surrender’
★☆☆☆☆ When reading initial comments about Peter Smith’s 1985 No Surrender, written by Alan Bleasdale, all signs seemed to point to promising; hilarious premise, politically edgy content and a smattering of dark undertones captured amongst grainy Liverpudlian backdrops.The foot of the blurb hails it as “One of the great British comedies of the 80s”, with…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Went the Day Well?’
★★★☆☆ Even if the films of Ealing Studios are not as widely viewed as they once were, any cinephile can probably describe the tone of their output: an easygoing atmosphere; charmingly British, often explicitly patriotic; and whether rural or urban in setting, they feature what has been referred to as the “Ealing village”. In Went…
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DVD Review: ‘Love Like Poison’
★★★☆☆ A quiet highlight of last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Love Like Poison (2010) is the debut feature of Katell Quillévéré and sees the director delving into a meaty concoction of Catholicism, domestic discontentment and the temptations of young love, but does so in the most subtle and gentle of ways, teasing out the drama…
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DVD Review: ‘Evil Rising’ (‘Sauna’)
★★☆☆☆ Evil Rising (also known as ‘Sauna’ [2008]), the second feature from award winning Finnish director Antti-Jussi Annila, is a challenging horror film with a heavy, exceptionally well-achieved eerie atmosphere that doesn’t let up. Unfortunately, despite his efforts towards evoking supernatural chills, Annila doesn’t appear to have been all that interested in the horror-side of his…
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DVD Review: ‘Night and Fog’
★★★★☆ It’s hard to think of where to begin with a discussion of Alain Resnais’ incredibly powerful Night and Fog (1955). Is it appropriate to recommend a film that operates on such a seminal level that it transcends cinematic experience and filmic consumption, to instead become an artistic document that should be witnessed by all,…
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DVD Review: ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’
★★★★★ More than 50 years after winning the Special Jury Prize at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, Alain Resnais’ first feature, Hiroshima Mon Amour is being rereleased by the British Film Institute as part of a retrospective of the director’s work. It is to this day a powerful, enigmatic film that has lost none of…
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Film Review: ‘The Big Picture’
★★☆☆☆ The Big Picture (2010) makes Swiss cheese look structurally sound. The central problem is the plot which, as anyone who watches a lot of films know, must be good if you’re trying to make a traditional, linear thriller. The story is about Paul (Romain Duris), who on the surface is a successful man who…
