DVD Review: ‘The Nine Muses’
★★★☆☆ From acclaimed British filmmaker John Akomfrah comes The Nine Muses (2010), a mesmerising hybrid of documentary, installation piece and visual essay that never...
★★☆☆☆ “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,” Percy Shelley once wrote in his sonnet England in 1819. He was firing his barbs at King George III but the words could just as well be used for any number of English monarchs including Henry VIII.
★★★★★ Turkish master director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to the Cannes Croisette with About Dry Grasses, a wonderful wintry meditation on male fragility and the way we often make our own hells and then deceive ourselves that we’re trapped.
★★★★☆ From sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan, Syria to Iraq and Iran, the climate crisis, drought, war, and oppression has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. It is treated as an ethical conundrum, but it isn’t. Either we wish to save those who are in danger of dying, or all our talk of human rights is just so much hot air. This is the core concern of Green Border.
★★★☆☆ From acclaimed British filmmaker John Akomfrah comes The Nine Muses (2010), a mesmerising hybrid of documentary, installation piece and visual essay that never...
★★★★☆ During the 1980s – and as one of Spain’s most influential directors – Carlos Saura moved away from his Franco-era political films such...
★★★★★ Following its recent StudioCanal digital restoration (in cooperation with La Cinémathèque de Toulouse) and cinematic rerelease earlier this month, Jean Renoir’s La Grande...
★★★★☆ The opening film of the rain-soaked 14th Udine Far East Film Festival, Hyeong-Cheol Kang’s aptly-titled South Korean comedy Sunny (2011) follows the uplifting...
★★☆☆☆ Having outstayed his welcome in London before a brief and pleasant sojourn in Paris, Woody Allen continues his European tour, this time landing...
★★★★★ Critics the world over will be scratching their heads and shaking nervously as they ponder their write-up of Marvel’s Avengers Assemble (2012) (previously...
★★★★☆ Rarely seen but frequently referenced in film studies lecture rooms, Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is a twisted tale of...
★★★☆☆ “You said nobody was supposed to die.” “I lied”, replies the gruff-voice of Marek (James Frain) near the beginning of Antonio Negret’s Transit...