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DVD Review: Birdman of Alcatraz
★★★★☆ While serving a life sentence and in indefinite solitary confinement, convicted murderer Robert Stroud began raising birds. In so doing, he educated himself and discovered cures for several avian diseases, eventually publishing his work. Based loosely on his life, John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film is a stately and moving depiction of the man’s capacity for…
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DVD Review: Flesh + Blood
★★★☆☆ It’s the year of our Lord 1501 and in Western Europe the venal and the powerful wage war. In this brutal society, to the victors go the spoils, but betrayal and vengeance are never far away. Paul Verhoeven’s first English language film Flesh + Blood is bloody, cynical and unrefined, but indicative of his later…
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Jumanji: The Next Level – What to expect
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was released in 2017. This is a reboot of the 1995 Jumanji, starring the late Robin Williams and was a great success. Earlier this year, Dwayne Johnson, who plays Dr. Smolder Bravestone in the movie, revealed that there will be a sequel to Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. The Jumanji…
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Film Review: The Producers
★★★★☆ Two schnooks decide to produce a play that’s bound to fail as a way of fleecing their investors. Such is the premise for Mel Brooks’ 1967 debut film The Producers, as broad as Broadway and cheerfully, life-affirmingly tasteless and nuts. A mere twenty years since Hitler kicked the bucket in his bunker, comedian and…
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Film Review: Maurice
★★★★☆ In a post-Call Me By Your Name world where the LGBT community has seen a film boom according to Vulture, cinematic representations of varying sexualities or genders are currently embraced by critics, audiences and the box office alike. Working as a template to which Luca Guadagnino would adopt in adapting André Aciman’s novel, James…
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Film Review: The Escape
★★★★☆ The Escape is an emotional exploration of a fractured marriage, but something much darker is at its core: depression and an existential crisis. Gemma Arterton is magnificent as Tara, the stay-at-home mother juggling never-ending laundry loads and repetitive breakfast routines for excitable children, whilst yearning for something more meaningful. Tara seems to carry the…
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Locarno 2018: Our picks of the festival
One of the oldest European film festivals, Locarno celebrates its 71st edition with a vibrant programme of new films featuring 13 world premieres. Artistic director Carlo Chatrain curates his final festival before moving on to take over the reins of the Berlinale, and you can see what qualified him for the job in this exciting…
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Criterion Review: King of Jazz
★★★☆☆ Costing a pricey-for-the-time $2 million, John Murray Anderson’s 1930 film was a Technicolor extravaganza but an almighty flop on release. Like a live-action, jazz precursor to Disney’s Fantasia, King of Jazz forgoes narrative in favour of big-screen spectacle and musical numbers. Setting out its stall in the opening minutes, we are treated to an…
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Criterion Review: F for Fake
★★★★★ Ostensibly a documentary about art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally slippery biographer, Clifford Irving, Orson Welles’ last completed film is more an elusive meditation on the nature of artifice, forgery and reality. F for Fake is a sometimes maddening, always brilliant disruption of the conventional documentary. Opening with Welles himself playing a…
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The Swedish entertainment industry is growing – and it’s not just film
If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that Sweden has been stepping up their entertainment game. We’ve been seeing Swedish actors rise to the top in Hollywood, Swedish authors writing the next best-seller and all kinds of other forms of entertainment being dominated by the Swedish component. It’s truly their time in the…
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