Film Review: Slack Bay
★★☆☆☆ Having wowed audiences with his last work Li’l Quinquin, Bruno Dumont’s much-anticipated seaside comedy Slack Bay arrived with high expectations. Though the farce...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ With Luca Guadagnino’s terrific Challengers, the acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name brings us the sub-genre we never knew we needed: the erotic tennis thriller.
★★☆☆☆ Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s “Abigail” mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless experience lacking creativity and wit.
★★☆☆☆ Maïwenn’s French period drama Jeanne du Barry is the perfect opening salvo for the 76th Cannes Film Festival. It is as glitzy and gaudy as the festival itself, with its vacuous politics drowned out by the thunderous sound of it slapping its own back.
★★☆☆☆ Having wowed audiences with his last work Li’l Quinquin, Bruno Dumont’s much-anticipated seaside comedy Slack Bay arrived with high expectations. Though the farce...
From European arthouse’s leading misery-guts to absurdist clown, the career switcheroo from Bruno Dumont is without doubt the most surprising volte–face of recent times....
★★★★☆ Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) is at the top of his game. A shock-jock radio host specialising as a kind of anti-Frasier Crane, he...
★★★★☆ The English title of Fritz Lang’s 1921 Der Müde Tod, or Destiny, may well be snappier, but the literal translation – The Weary...
★★★☆☆ A young Australian backpacker Clare (Teresa Palmer) emerges from a subway station in Berlin. Seen from a distance, she already looks vulnerable as...
★★★★★ “Don’t be devils! Don’t ruin the interest your friends could take in this film. Don’t tell them what you saw. Thank you, for...
★★★☆☆ After three Supermen, five Batmen and fifteen MCU films with more stars called Chris than women in the lead, the undisputed Queen of...
★★★★☆ First shown at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it screened to acclaim as part of the Directors’ Fortnight selection, My Life as...