The Oscars: Just a Hollywood meat parade?
Of all the Oscar protests – from Sacheen Littlefeather and Marlon Brando in 1973, to #OscarsSoWhite last year, Michael Moore castigating George W. Bush...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
Of all the Oscar protests – from Sacheen Littlefeather and Marlon Brando in 1973, to #OscarsSoWhite last year, Michael Moore castigating George W. Bush...
★★★☆☆ It’s some time since any degree of positivity has come out of a bitterly divided, and divisive, US of A. Peter Berg’s Patriots...
★★☆☆☆ Xavier Dolan has adapted theatrical works before. 2013’s Tom at the Farm was a divisive feature but rendered Michael Marc Bouchard’s play in...
★★★★☆ Just a week after Moonlight graced UK cinema screens in all its feverish beauty we’re treated to another hard-hitting US indie release that...
★★★★☆ Gore Verbinski’s new film A Cure for Wellness returns the gothic genre to its roots in melodrama. A grand tale of love and...
★★★★☆ Regularly heralded as the greatest Cuban film of all time, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment is a ranging, challenging work. A cine-essay...
★★★★★ The Crying Game has come to be defined by its twist. More than something like Psycho‘s shower scene, it’s treated as such a...
★★★★★ Just over fifty years after A Man for All Seasons won six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor for Paul Scofield, Fred...