Blu-ray Review: ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ (60th Anniversary)
★★★★★ Featuring a host of sparkling musical numbers and several iconic set pieces, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s 1952 masterpiece Singin’ in the Rain...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★★ Featuring a host of sparkling musical numbers and several iconic set pieces, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s 1952 masterpiece Singin’ in the Rain...
★★★★☆ In 1951, Ealing Studios headed north with The Man in the White Suit, the story of a scientist, Sidney Stratton (played by Ealing...
★★★★☆ Coinciding with the Ealing: Light and Dark season, It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) – given a pristine digital restoration by the National Archive...
The Scottish Baftas took place at Glasgow’s upmarket Radisson Blu Hotel last night where host Edith Bowman, an assortment of Scottish film and television...
★★★☆☆ Midi Z’s debut film Return to Burma (2011) offers an unflinching insight into an under-reported part of the world. This semi-autobiographical tale, sombre...
★★★☆☆ British psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair was one of the more vocal opponents to the London 2012 Olympics because, to quote one of the contributors...
★★★★☆ This year’s other great work about the hardships of old age and the inevitability of death – released in UK cinemas several months...
★★★☆☆ Five years and four bestselling books later, it seems we’ve finally come to the end of the multi-million dollar grossing, teen vamp Twilight...