Kinoteka 2015: Read our preview
On Wednesday 8 April at 6pm, the BFI will host a screening of Krzysztof Zanussi’s dialectic satire Camouflage (1977) – followed by a Q&A...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
On Wednesday 8 April at 6pm, the BFI will host a screening of Krzysztof Zanussi’s dialectic satire Camouflage (1977) – followed by a Q&A...
★★★☆☆ Ryan Gosling makes a return to cinema screens – this time in the director’s chair – with his first feature film Lost River...
★★★★☆ John Wick (2015) is something of a throwback in more ways than one. Not only does its lean thriller narrative combine with stylish...
“I’ve been doing this for a year,” Viggo Mortensen chuckles when we ask him if he’s been talking to journalists all day. It’s an...
★★★★☆ The awkward skirmishes of a growing marital rift are the thrust of Ruben Östlund’s hilarious and deadpan Swedish satire Force Majeure (2014). Snow-laden...
★★★☆☆ Drone warfare is a uniquely contemporary issue that is still plaguing many countries, especially those in the Middle East who find themselves consistently...
★★☆☆☆ Better Things director Duane Hopkins’ second feature, Bypass (2014), is a stylistically overblown tale from the lower echelons of crime and economic hardship....
★★★★☆ Michael and Peter Spierig’s Predestination (2014) is a tricky little thinker of a film that delivers on the promise of time-travelling shenanigans. While...