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Film Review: ‘The Next Three Days’
★★☆☆☆ An argument at the office holds horrifying consequences for Elizabeth Banks’ Lara Brennan in Paul Haggis’s The Next Three Days (2010). After police raid her idyllic family home – where she lives happily with husband John (Russell Crowe) – and following a cruel judicial process, John is forced to come to terms with his…
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Special Feature: The Most Anticipated Films of 2011
Happy New Year one and all and welcome officially to 2011! The last twelve months have arguably been a great cumulative year for cinema, but with new films scheduled for release from British Oscar winner Danny Boyle, dynamic duo the Coen brothers, Darren Aronofsky and the seldom-seen Terrence Malick, 2011 is shaping up to be…
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Barbican Film: Andrei Konchalovsky Directorspective
This January, Barbican Film’s regular director retrospective series presents the films of one of Russia’s best known and revered Russian film makers, Andrei Konchalovsky.Konchalovsky was student to the celebrated Mosfilm veteran Mikhail Romm at VKIG (Moscow State Film School) and his filmmaking career has seen him receive both censorship and major awards such as Venice Grand Special…
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DVD Releases: ‘Freakonomics’
Based off the bestselling book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics (2010) brings together five documentary film makers – each tackling their own unique chapters loosely relating to an aspect of the human condition – including Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me [2004] fame), Seth Gorden (King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters [2007]) and Alex Gibney…
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DVD Releases: ‘Deep Red’
Continuing Arrow Video’s campaign to reinvigorate ageing ‘giallo’ exploitation cinema with the freshness of high definition, Dario Argento’s Deep Red (1975) is released today on Blu-ray disc. Beginning with the violent slaughter of a psychic, Argento’s cult thriller soon develops into a gripping detective murder mystery following music teacher Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) and his flirtatious,…
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DVD Review: ‘A Serbian Film’
★☆☆☆☆ There are, it would seem, a growing number of films that can claim to have at one stage carried the hallowed moniker ‘the most controversial film of all time’. Controversy is, of course, entirely subjective – Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) was controversial in the context of its religious content, whilst David Cronenberg’s…
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Theatrical Releases: ‘The Way Back’
Inspired by a true story of almost unbelievable magnitude, The Way Back (2010) marks Peter Weir’s return cinema after a seven year hiatus following his 2003’s historical romp, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.Taking place in 1940, The Way Back sees a group of men escape from the Siberian Gulag and journey…
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Theatrical Releases: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Whatever accusations one may be justified in throwing towards the massively successful franchises of Harry Potter and Twilight, it’s difficult to argue that they aren’t carried off with hefty lashings of convincing magical clout that firmly situate us, however we may feel about them, in their fantasy worlds.Disappointingly however, this has hardly been a feat…
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DVD Review: ‘True Justice: Deadly Crossing’
★☆☆☆☆ Well, first let me explain that True Justice: Deadly Crossing (2010) is not a ‘movie’ in any traditional sense of the term, more the left over footage from a failed television show created by action movie legend-come-self-parody, Steven Seagal. Essentially the first and second episodes from the shelved TV cop show True Justice, Deadly…
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DVD Review: ‘Piranha 3D’
★★★☆☆ Following the honest carnage and thrills of Switchblade Romance (2003) and the enjoyably nasty but thematically over-explicit remake of The Hills Have Eyes (2006) (much lacking the relative subtlety of the original), Alexandre Aja – much like Rob Zombie did with his 2007 Halloween remake – proves himself more of a ‘grindhouse’ director than Quentin…
EIFF 2026