Edinburgh 2014: ‘Snowpiercer’ review
★★★★★ A stunning, visionary example of dystopian science fiction cinema at its very best, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (2013) – based 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.
★★★★★ A stunning, visionary example of dystopian science fiction cinema at its very best, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (2013) – based in...
★★★★☆ Six directors presenting six separate encounters from four Southeast Asian countries, Letters from the South (2013) explores the fluid relationship between the Chinese...
★★★☆☆ Teenage rebellion in the sundrenched plains of Texas is the subject of Kat Candler’s Hellion (2014), an ultimately unremarkable drama starring Breaking Bad’s...
★★★☆☆ As the old proverb goes, “The best answer to anger is silence”. In Saodat Ismailova’s sensory meditation on the realities of womanhood, we...
★★★★☆ Before the gloomy portent of The Deer Hunter (1978) and the majesty of Heaven’s Gate (1980), Michael Cimino’s debut, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974),...
★★☆☆☆ Five months, one week and three days; that’s how long the battle of Stalingrad lasted. One of the bloodiest battles of WWII, the...
★★★★☆ The debut feature from Stephen Brown, The Sea (2013) is a compassionate rendering of John Banville’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel. After losing his...
★★★★☆ “I’m gonna finish my fuckin’ symphony.” That powerful phrase comes up as Kathleen Hanna recalls a musician friend’s defiant reaction to a hideous...