DVD Review: ‘Special Forces’
★★★☆☆ Stephane Rybojad’s Special Forces (Forces spéciales, 2011) follows a French military unit’s high-risk mission to rescue anti-war correspondent Elsa Casanova (Diane Kruger) from...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★☆☆ Stephane Rybojad’s Special Forces (Forces spéciales, 2011) follows a French military unit’s high-risk mission to rescue anti-war correspondent Elsa Casanova (Diane Kruger) from...
★★☆☆☆ The death of Joyce Vincent came under great media scutiny in 2003. Her skeleton, identified dentally by a picture of her smiling, was...
★★★☆☆ From first-time director D.R. Hood and starring the unquestionable talents of Claire Foy, Benedict Cumberbatch and Shaun Evans, Artificial Eye’s Wreckers (2011) clearly...
★★★★★ The label ‘master filmmaker’ is often overused, but in the case of prolific Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi, it is totally justified. Ranked among...
★★★☆☆ Made on a shoestring budget and self-distributed by debut feature writer and director Bryan O’Neil after he became disillusioned by various distribution studios,...
★★★★★ Now sadly infamous for being the last completed feature film by the late Chilean directorial master Raúl Ruiz (25 July 1941 – 19...
★★★★☆ Having committed the apparent cardinal sin of never reading Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel of the same name (in full, at least), Cary Fukunaga’s...
★★★☆☆ Destined to be broadcast on Sunday afternoons from now until the end of days, Oscar-nominee The Help (2011) is a sweet, involving and...