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DVD Releases: ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’
The original Wall Street was one of those films that defined the era in which it was made, as well as providing us with workable credos such as “greed is good” and “lunch is for wimps.” It earned Michael Douglas – already a very seasoned actor and producer – an Oscar for his role as…
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DVD Review: ‘World’s Greatest Dad’
★★★☆☆ Somewhere between inspired and exceptional lies Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad (2009). A pitch black comedy fashioned at the stroke of midnight in a deep, dark cave. The ever brave Robin Williams is on lead role duty as failed writer and single father Lance, a nice but spineless poetry teacher struggling to keep his seemingly disturbed…
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DVD Releases: ‘Winter’s Bone’
Hands up who knows what the Ozark Mountains look like? Well, you won’t soon forget after watching this bleak thriller. Winter’s Bone (2010) has already received 4 Academy Award nominations this year and it’s not hard to see why – you haven’t seen a landscape so unwelcoming since No Country for Old Men (2007) or The Road…
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DVD Releases: ‘Mr. Nice’
Lying on the golden beach of Koh Tao, Thailand, in the sweltering heat of last December, I was totally absorbed in Howard Marks’ life story Mr. Nice. His autobiography emulated such wit and sparkle and wove such a fascinating story that I was still turning pages well after the sun went down. So I was understandably more…
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DVD Review: ‘Amer’
★★★☆☆ Amer (2009) co-director Bruno Forzani has himself admitted that Dario Argento’s cult classic Tenebrae (1982) was one of the main inspirations for the movie, having seen it seventeen times as a self-confessed giallo fan. There’s a lot in the film that owes a great deal to Dario Argento and the infamous Italian exploitation style…
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Film Review: ‘Hereafter’
★☆☆☆☆ It was around this time last year that Peter Jackson’s bold and visually stunning vision of the afterlife, The Lovely Bones (2010), was met with – at best – lukewarm responses from both audiences and critics. Rather upsettingly, to predict such a reaction for director Clint Eastwood’s latest film, Hereafter (2011) would require superhuman…
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Film Review: ‘Biutiful’
★★★★☆ “A change is as good as a rest” seems to have been the ethos utilised by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu with his latest release Biutiful (2010), recently nominated for ‘Best Foreign Film’ at this year’s upcoming Academy Awards.Dropping the multinational, parallel narrative structure of past films Babel (2006), 21 Grams (2003) and his acclaimed…
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Film Review: ‘Barney’s Version’
★★☆☆☆ Man meets woman; man marries woman; man ruins marriage and moves on to next woman; Barney has a selfish life cycle, which makes him hard to like. But there’s one thing in his favour: he’s played by the always likeable Paul Giamatti. It’s lucky then that film maker Richard J. Lewis is directing Barney’s…
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Interview: Andrei Konchalovsky at Barbican
Andrei Konchalovsky’s most recent film, The Nutcracker in 3D (2010), was a box office flop in the States. However, in the past Konchalovsky has also known great success, including the award winning House of Fools (2002) which took the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. As a filmmaker, Konchalovsky has certainly had a…
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Intolerable Cruelty’
★★★☆☆ Intolerable Cruelty (2003) stands as the Coen brothers’ most critically reviled film. It’s hugely underrated, and perhaps with the gift of retrospection others will too with the release of Intolerable Cruelty on Blu-ray. George Clooney plays Miles Massey, a teeth and hair-obsessed divorce lawyer working in Los Angeles. His opposing number is Catherine Zeta-Jones…
EIFF 2026