Reviews
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DVD Review ‘An Education’
★★★★☆ An Education (2009) is based on the memoir of British journalist Lynn Barber. In the early 1960s, aged sixteen, she was swept off her feet by the attentions of an older man. Fortunately, she discovered in time that he was living a lie and managed to extricate herself with no other damage than a…
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DVD Review: ‘We Live in Public’
★★★★☆ If you haven’t heard of Josh Harris before, perhaps it’s time to rectify that. The timely release of Dig! (2004) director Ondi Timoner’s new documentary, We Live in Public reminisces on the last 40 years since the dawn of the internet, specifically tracking the arguably destructive path of Harris, one of the masterminds behind the…
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DVD Review: ‘Avatar’
★★★★☆ For those who caught James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) during the film’s cinematic release, this was most likely the first thought to have entered your warped minds as you left the local multiplex/IMAX. Now released for the small screen on 2D formats DVD and Blu-ray, the world of Pandora is still unlike anything you will have seen before. Pandora’s exotic flora and fauna…
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Udine 2010: ‘Sophie’s Revenge’ review
★★★★☆ Conforming to the usual fun-filled predictability of the romantic-comedy genre, as well as the big budget aesthetics and laugh out loud humour associated with lead actress/director Eva Jin, Sophie’s Revenge (2009) shows us that whatever Hollywood can do Asian Cinema can more than match. Whether you consider this ethos as positive or negative will largely determine…
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Theatrical Releases: ‘Date Night’
Date Night (2010), starring US comedy heavy weights Tina Fey (30 Rock) and Steve Carell (The American Office), is the latest comic offering from Night at the Museum (2006) director Shawn Levy. Taking a break from the ‘family-fun’ franchise Levy takes the helm on this comedy of errors (or rather of mistaken identity) set in New York…
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Theatrical Releases: ‘Repo Men’
The title Repo Men brings Darren Lynn Bousman’s Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) to mind and indeed the two films share some significant similarities. Both take place in a not too distant future, where organs are sold on credit and repossessed if the patent falls behind on his payments; both boast significantly visceral scenes of gore and grotesque…
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DVD Review: ‘Dorian Gray’
★★★☆☆ Based on the influential novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by visionary writer Oscar Wilde, Oliver Parker’s take on the Gothic classic interestingly focuses on the idea of celebrity rather than the generic horror you would expect. If you anticipate a straight page-for-page adaptation, or an expansion of the Gray we see featured in 2003’s…
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Film Review: Kakera: A Piece of Our Life
★★★★☆ There are films you love, films you hate and films that, quite frankly, leave you more perplexed than George W. Bush with a bumper book of Sudoku. Kakera – A Piece of Our Life (2009) is likely to fall into that latter category for many people, as Momoko Ando’s directorial debut is certainly something…
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DVD Review: 2012
★☆☆☆☆ With 2012 (2009), director Roland Emmerich appears to have finally defeated his own selling-point. The idea of a high-concept disaster movie has been ignored. There is no clear, marketable threat here as in his previous films, having demonised the weather in The Day After Tomorrow (2004), extra-terrestrials in Independence Day (1996), and Godzilla in, um, Godzilla…
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DVD Review: The Box
★★★☆☆ The most unexpected pleasure of watching Richard Kelly’s The Box (2009) is the realisation that it is (in essence) a Christmas film, distilling the dread, panic and encompassing consumerism associated with the festive period, whilst presented in the form of a psychological horror. Like most examples of the horror genre, it externalises and exaggerates…