Film Review: ‘The Descendants’
★★★★☆ About Schmidt (2002) and Sideways (2004) director Alexander Payne returns triumphantly after a seven-year hiatus with the wonderfully poignant, Hawaii-based comic-drama The Descendants...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ About Schmidt (2002) and Sideways (2004) director Alexander Payne returns triumphantly after a seven-year hiatus with the wonderfully poignant, Hawaii-based comic-drama The Descendants...
★★☆☆☆ Sitting through Jes Benstock’s The British Guide to Showing Off (2011) is (presumably) like a bad acid trip – loud, garish and leaves...
★★★★☆ The premise of 30 Minutes or Less (2011), the latest film from Zombieland (2009) director Ruben Fleischer, sounds slightly worrying – how was an action...
★★★☆☆ Life, Above All (2010) – which has been compared to 2009’s Precious – enjoyed a warm reception on the festival circuit and was...
★☆☆☆☆ It defies logic how some films get made – Scott Spiegel’s Hostel: Part III (2011) has no redeeming virtues whatsoever, a perfect example...
★★★☆☆ It’s taken just over 18 months for Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard (2009) to make its way to DVD (courtesy of New Wave Films), following...
★★★★☆ The third feature from Chilean director Pablo Larraín, Post Mortem (2010) is a bleak, deeply melancholic portrait of his country of birth, set...
★★★☆☆ Directed by John Madden, The Debt (2010) is not only a highly entertaining, gripping thriller but also boasts a very impressive cast including Helen Mirren,...