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Film Review: ‘Oranges and Sunshine’
★★★★☆ ‘Understated’ is a word that is rarely applied to mainstream entertainment today. With the rapid advancement in technology that enables 3D graphics and surround-sound not just into people’s cinemas but their living rooms, it’s a refreshing experience to sit and observe, and not be a player in the action. Don’t get me wrong –…
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Film Review: ‘Blooded’
★★☆☆☆ On his knees, a gun to his head and wearing nought but his underwear, the UK’s leading pro-fox hunting figurehead stares into the camera of his captors and refuses to submit that his life-long passion is actually nothing more than inhuman brutality. This is just one of many equally underwhelming sequences that comprise British…
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DVD Releases: ‘Made in Dagenham’
For a film that wants itself to be taken seriously, Made in Dagenham’s (2010) marketing campaign has made it very hard to look at the film as anything other than light-hearted and cheap. The generic ‘group of smiling people on a white background’ poster and uninspired title makes it out to be a dull and vacuous affair, but…
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Film Review: ‘His & Hers’
★★★★☆ What stays with the viewer most after watching Ken Wardrop’s documentary His & Hers (2011) is not the power of film, specifically documentary, to capture the intricacies of normal life; it’s the beauty of the apparently ‘normal life’ itself. The relatively uninspiring subject of presenting a series of women (seventy in total) talking about…
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Special Feature: 10 facts about Vincent Gallo
1. Vincent Gallo is widely known for his work as an actor but as a young artist he poured the majority of his creativity and passions into music, working alongside graffiti artist Jean Michel Basquiat in Gray, a 1970’s experimental music project, and in rock band ‘Bunny’ with Lukas Haas. Mr Gallo has been around the…
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DVD Releases: ‘Dream Home’
Hong Kong horror Dream Home (2010) tells the story of single professional Cheng Li-sheung (Josie Ho), who grows up in an area that isn’t worth a great amount, with dreams and hopes of one day owning a harbour-view apartment. Despite working two jobs and countless hours, the dream always seems just out of reach.However, through pure dedication,…
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Film Review: ‘Cave of Forgotten Dreams’
★★★★★ The millennia old receives the 3D treatment in Werner Herzog’s truly extraordinary Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011). Having travelled to some of the furthest corners of the Earth – filming on every continent, and producing some unquestionably definitive works of cinema (Fitzcarraldo [1982], Aguirre: The Wrath of God [1972]) – Werner Herzog is not only the…
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Film Review: ‘Forget Me Not’
★★☆☆☆ Forget Me Not (2010) could never be called original – a couple meet in an urban environment, have a wild night together and miraculously they fall for each other in a whirlwind romance has been done before (and a lot better than this, but not much) in films such as Before Sunrise (1995) and…
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Special Feature: Acting families in film
Lots of performing artists have followed in the footsteps of their acting parents, siblings or extended family: just think the Baldwins, the Sheens and the Sutherlands. To celebrate the March 28 DVD release of City Island (2010), starring Andy Garcia and his daughter Dominik Garcia-Lorido, we take a look at films that featured real life…
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DVD Releases: ‘City Island’
Andy Garcia’s portrayal of Vincent Mancini in The Godfather: Part III (1990) is one of the great forgotten performances. He’s the flip side of Pacino’s Michael. The young, energetic, passionate street hustler, as opposed to the ageing, weary and emotionally challenged Don. Garcia nails the role, electrifying the screen with his pent up anger and…
EIFF 2026
