Criterion Review: Smithereens
★★★★☆ The grimy, crime-ridden cesspool of New York in the 1970s and early 1980s is a well-worn cinematic setting, but in her debut 1982...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ The grimy, crime-ridden cesspool of New York in the 1970s and early 1980s is a well-worn cinematic setting, but in her debut 1982...
★★★★☆ Released as Raw Meat in the US, Gary Sherman’s cult debut feature Death Line works as both a gruesome exploitation horror set in the...
★★★☆☆ Also known as In the Devil’s Garden, British director Sidney Hayers’ 1971 film Assault is cast very much in the mode of contemporary Italian...
★★★★☆ French Palme d’Or winner Jacques Audiard’s The Sisters Brothers gallops into UK cinemas this week with John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix as...
★★★★☆ The Coen brothers go West once more with their latest offering The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Netflix-produced anthology of bizarre tales of...
★★★☆☆ As the third remake, A Star Is Born could have been called A Star Is Born (Again), but Bradley Cooper’s soulful exploration of...
★★★★☆ We must be reaching Welles saturation point this year. Mark Cousins’ The Eyes of Orson Welles landed on the piles of Wellesaphilia, soon...
★★★★☆ Mexican Academy Award-winning director Alfonso Cuarón returns to his childhood for inspiration with his meticulously beautiful Netflix offering Roma, an autobiographical black and white...