Reviews
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Film Review: ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’
★★★★☆ Somebody once said of iconic actress Audrey Hepburn that she was not a great actress in the “traditional sense”. Whether true or not, this did not prevent her star from shining: her style, charisma and screen presence are still renowned to this very day. The fashion world copies her look (the little black dress…
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Film Review: ‘The Portuguese Nun’
★☆☆☆☆ As a film that has been met with almost unanimous critical praise, I am still wondering whether it was in fact Eugene Green’s A Portuguese Nun (2009) that I painfully and, eventually, begrudgingly endured. For this is without question one of the most tedious, long-winded and utterly pretentious films I have put myself through…
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Film Review: ‘Black Swan’
★★★★★ Black Swan (2010) is a work of chilling beauty. Its excellent cinematography, dance, and music – all accompanied by the performance of an exciting cast – makes it a delicacy for the eyes and ears. But much like any other Darren Aronofsky film, it requires some unravelling and consideration.Black Swan has a narrative that…
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DVD Releases: ‘Betrayal’
Having just said goodbye to 2010 – a year which few would argue had been a particularly impressive one for the world of cinema – it is with a hint of disappointment that I must bring to your attention a DVD release of such crashing and unbridled nonsense so early on in 2011. The…
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DVD Review: ‘Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment’
★★★☆☆ As a film that deals with themes of insanity, jealousy, romance and class division, whilst simultaneously skipping between madcap comedy and tragic love story, it is little wonder that Karel Reisz’s Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966) achieves rather mixed results.The film details the descent into madness of the already psychologically unstable Morgan (David Warner),…
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DVD Review: ‘Soul Men’
★★★☆☆ It amazes me that Soul Men (2008) didn’t get much exposure when it was first released in November 2008, given the two star names attached to the feature, namely Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes. In fact, on release in the States it only managed to make back a measly $12 million (just…
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DVD Releases: ‘Certified Copy’
Certified Copy is the first of Abbas Kiarostami’s features to be filmed outside his native Iran. He is renowned for his use of non-professional actors, but here he employs the considerable talents of Juliette Binoche (winner of the Best Actress award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival) to work alongside British opera-singer William Shimmel, in…
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Film Review: ‘Amer’
★★★☆☆ Amer (2009) co-director Bruno Forzani has himself admitted that Dario Argento’s cult classic Tenebrae (1982) was one of the main inspirations for the movie, having seen it 17 times as a self confessed “giallo” fan (“giallo” being the Italian equivalent of pulp fiction, named after the Italian word for yellow due to the fact that most pulp crime novels had yellow covers).There…
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Film Review: ‘Conviction’
★★★☆☆ Tony Goldwyn’s Conviction (2009) treads the well worn path of many of its BFI London Film Festival contemporaries this year – Julian Schnabel’s Miral (2010) and Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours (2010) to name but two – in prefacing their story with the phrase “Based on a true story/real events”. Apparently nothing is quite as compelling as…
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DVD Releases: ‘Catfish’
Catfish (2010) is unlike anything I’ve ever seen; even defining its genre proves problematic. I’d like to settle on docu-thriller, but its ever-changing tone means you don’t really know what you’re watching until the film’s conclusion. The problem with reviewing it also is, the less you know, the more you’ll enjoy it.Henry Joost and Ariel ‘Rel’ Schulman…