Reviews
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DVD Releases: ‘Bored to Death – Season One’
Being asked to review Bored to Death – Season One whilst I am eight episodes into Game of Thrones has meant that I’ve broken my rule of never allowing myself to get involved in two HBO shows simultaneously. Way back when I attempted to watch the The Wire and Six Feet Under under these circumstances…
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DVD Review: ‘The Fighter’
★★★☆☆ David O. Russell’s boxing biopic The Fighter (2010) may not have won as many Academy Awards as it would have liked to, but the awards it did win (Best Supporting Actor gong for Christian Bale and it’s sister statue for Melissa Leo) were rightly deserved – although Geoffrey Rush’s performance as Lionel Logue in…
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Film Review: ‘Potiche’
★★★★☆ There are so many reasons to love François Ozon’s latest film, Potiche (2011). It possesses jollity, a strong sense of playfulness and boasts the fact that it reunites the much-loved belle dame of French cinema Catherine Deneuve with the larger than life Gerard Depardieu (her last role was opposite him in the 1988 film…
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Film Review: ‘The Beaver’
★★★☆☆ We may only be halfway through the year, but it is my firm belief that the remainder of 2011 will not see a more divisive or bizarre offering as Jodie Foster’s The Beaver (2011). This really is one of the most unbalanced, incohesive, disturbing, vomit-inducing, yet strangely captivating movies I have seen in some…
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DVD Review: ‘Paul’
★★★☆☆ Aspiring illustrator Graeme Willy (Simon Pegg) and wannabe sci-fi writer Clive Gollings (Nick Frost) are in geek paradise when they visit Comic-Con in San Diego. In an attempt to get the most out of their American Southwest excursion and add a perfect addition to their recent visit to the sci-fi and fantasy heaven, they…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Apocalypse Now’
★★★★★ It’s difficult to find something new to say about Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 masterpiece Apocalypse Now. Just about everything that can be said of this genuinely mesmeric work of art has been said a million times before. However, while it is cited by many as the greatest war movie of all time, I for…
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DVD Releases: ‘Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance’
★★★★★ To the uniniated, it’s hard to sum up the audaciously ambitious universe of Hideaki Anno’s Evangelion saga without a little history, and so… First broadcast in Japan back in 1995, Anno’s original TV series Neon Genesis: Evangelion garnered instant acclaim both from fans and critics alike. However, production was anything but smooth, with the…
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Film Review: ‘The Hangover Part II’
★☆☆☆☆ Given that the finale of 2009’s humorous and hugely popular comedy The Hangover pretty much wrapped up things by filling in all the blanks of its narrative macguffin, completely detailing the events of the raucous night before, the prospect of a sequel was both puzzling and questionable. Yet, two years later here we are…
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Film Review: ‘Kung Fu Panda 2’
★★★☆☆ Dreamworks Animation has been on somewhat of a roll recently with the success of both Kung Fu Panda (2008) and last year’s How To Train Your Dragon (2010). Whether that roll continues was down to this inevitable sequel but how have Po and co held up in their second outing?Everyone has something to say…
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Udine Far East Film Festival 2011: ‘Buddha Mountain’
★★★☆☆ Chinese director Li Yu’s Buddha Mountain (2010) revolves around Ding Bo (Cheng Bolin), Nan Feng (Fan Bingbing) and Fatso (Fei Long) – three characthers on the fringe, verging upon social failure, each rebelling against the world that has brought them nothing but problems. Ding Bo has trouble coping with his father replacing his deceased mother with…