DVD Review: ‘The Jia Zhang-Ke Collection’
★★★★☆ Chinese director Jia Zhang-Ke may already be well-known to cineliterate Western audiences for his 2006 film Still Life or, perhaps from his effort two...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ Chinese director Jia Zhang-Ke may already be well-known to cineliterate Western audiences for his 2006 film Still Life or, perhaps from his effort two...
★★★★☆ Many a film fan may have gone through life thus far without lavishing an abundance of attention on the cinema of Czechoslovakia –...
★★★★☆ Making the effort to think of something that Seth MacFarlane (the much-loved creator of hit American adult animations Family Guy, American Dad and...
★★★★☆ Widely considered as one of the most sophisticated comedies ever produced, Trouble in Paradise (1932) fizzes like a glass of vintage champagne –...
★★★☆☆ One of the most influential acts of the grunge era, second perhaps only to Kurt Cobain and his mighty Nirvana in terms of...
★★☆☆☆ Over the past decade or so, multilingual stage and screen star Kristin Scott Thomas has carved a palatable little niche for herself; appearing...
★★★★★ Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) receives a welcome Dual Format rerelease this week, bundled with two very distinct...
★★★★☆ Yasujirō Ozu’s Floating Weeds (1959), a remake of the director’s 1935 silent short A Story of Floating Weeds, was given a magnificent colour...