DVD Review: ‘Ghost Stories from the BBC’ Vol. 5 (BFI release)
★★★☆☆ Completing the BFI’s accumulative DVD collection of ghost story adaptations, which over the years became a staple of the BBC’s Christmas and New...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★☆☆ Completing the BFI’s accumulative DVD collection of ghost story adaptations, which over the years became a staple of the BBC’s Christmas and New...
★★★★☆ Written by Sleeping Beauty (2011) director Julia Leigh and starring Willem Dafoe, Daniel Nettheim’s The Hunter (2011) is a peculiar beast of a...
What better way to get closer to the movies you cherish than to see the actual, iconic costumes which were once adorned by your...
Judy Ironside is the Founder and Executive Director of UK Jewish Film, which explores Jewish and interfaith cinema with an annual two-week festival in...
★★★★☆ A key part of the BFI’s Ealing: Light and Dark season and rereleased this Friday, Robert Hamer’s It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)...
★★★☆☆ Almost perennially it seems, humanity’s favourite flightless birds – the humble penguin – descend in numbers upon UK box offices, looking to re-capture...
★★☆☆☆ One of two relatively high profile, Irish-produced features to screen at this year’s Film4 FrightFest (the other being Jon Wright’s hugely enjoyable alien...
★★★☆☆ Despite being over 30 years old, there remains a small pocket of fanatics habitually delving into the darkest recesses of the Overlook Hotel...