DVD Review: ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’
★★★★★ The Coen brothers are in fine form with Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), a brilliant portrait of a struggling folk singer (Oscar Isaac). It’s...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★★ The Coen brothers are in fine form with Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), a brilliant portrait of a struggling folk singer (Oscar Isaac). It’s...
★★★★☆ In 2010, writer and director Yoon Sung-hyun caught the attention of both critics and international film festival audiences alike with his debut film...
★★★☆☆ A snarling, scabrous adaptation of American playwright Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning familial drama, John Wells’ August: Osage County (2013) makes its way onto...
Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan this evening won Cannes’ top prize, the coveted Palme d’Or, for his latest film, Winter Sleep. A worthy award winner...
★★★★☆ Having carried home the Grand Jury Prize for Best Film back in 2011 with the exceptional Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, celebrated...
★★☆☆☆ The recently crowned winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes is Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó’s sixth feature, White God...
★★★★☆ A real gem hidden deep in the Cannes’ ACID sidebar, Spartacus & Cassandra (2014) follows two Roma children in France coming to terms...
★★☆☆☆ Showing in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes, film editor Andrew Hulme’s directorial debut, Snow in Paradise (2014), is a brave attempt...