Venice 2014: ‘Burying the Ex’ review
★☆☆☆☆ Showing out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, Joe Dante’s zom-com Burying the Ex (2014) is an unfunny undead comedy that in...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★☆☆☆☆ Showing out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, Joe Dante’s zom-com Burying the Ex (2014) is an unfunny undead comedy that in...
★★★☆☆ Turkish filmmaker Kaan Mujdeci’s debut feature film and Venice competition entry Sivas (2014) is a well-shot if slight story of a young boy...
★★★☆☆ In a Venice that has been bizarrely bereft of strong female performances and roles – Bechdel tests at the ready – Xiaoshuai Wang’s...
★★★☆☆ Novelist, scenarist, journalist, political thinker, opinion maker and film director, Pier Paolo Pasolini was and is a huge influence on Italian intellectual life...
★★★☆☆ The most terrifying horror can often be found right on your own doorstep. Director Simeon Halligan’s Scottish chiller White Settlers (2014) proves that...
★★★☆☆ Water both resists and exists. It’s both the giver of life and the destroyer of futures. The Earth is covered by 71% of...
★★☆☆☆ The quest for a new take on the romantic comedy has been a vague Hollywood inclination since Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer...
★★☆☆☆ Sex Tape (2014), the new US comedy from Jake Kasdan, starts off on the front foot with some funny sight gags and its...