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Interview: Ferzan Ozpetek, ‘Loose Cannons’
From his opening shots of a bride striding through the Italian countryside before turning a gun on herself, Italo-Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek plays with our expectations. Drama, melodrama, domestic tragedy, family comedy: Loose Cannons (2010) has it all.Set in Lecce, in the south of Italy, the Cantone clan gather for a family dinner to welcome youngest…
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DVD Review: ‘Sus’
★★★☆☆ It is election night, 3 May 1979, and police officer Karn (Ralph Brown) is confident that Margaret Thatcher will win a landslide victory. An innocent black man, Leon Delroy (Clint Dyer), is brought in for interrogation, accused of murdering his pregnant wife who died after suffering a massive haemorrhage. Karn and his thuggish sidekick,…
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DVD Releases: ‘La Ciénaga’
Argentinian-born director Lucrecia Martel crafted her newly rereleased debut feature La Ciénaga (The Swamp) in 2001, receiving praise from critics and audience alike. The film does indeed stand as a testimony of her directorial talent and ability to let the story tell itself. La Ciénaga is a sober, quiet, unpretentious film which, just like its title, presents itself…
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DVD Review: ‘Knight and Day’
★★☆☆☆ Tom Cruise often comes across as a pint-sized, arrogant, pampered Hollywood cliché, and his notorious appearance on The Oprah Winfrey show could (and perhaps should) have been the final nail in his career’s 5ft solid gold coffin, yet Cruise somehow bounced back onto screens earlier this year with the globe-trotting action adventure Knight and Day (2010).Knight and…
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DVD Review: ‘The Expendables’
★★★★☆ The intent behind The Expendables (2010) is now legendary; a chance to bring back the past action stars of yore, all heralded under heavyweight director/writer/star Sylvester Stallone’s banner. The Expendables introduces (or should that be re-introduces) us to a gang of mercenaries, hard as nails but with hearts as big as their biceps, including…
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Film Review: ‘The War You Don’t See’
★★★★☆ I’m not going to review John Pilger’s documentary The War You Don’t See (2010). It’s beyond critique and to be honest, it’s had such a profound effect on me that at the moment my role as a film reviewer seems shallow and ridiculous. Such cinematic discussions have their time and place and I’m sure…
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Theatrical Releases: ‘The Thorn in the Heart’
Have you ever made a film about your Aunt Suzette? Michel Gondry has. Why should you care? Maybe you don’t like watching other people’s home movies. Maybe you don’t even have an Aunt Suzette. Watching Gondry’s autobiographical documentary The Thorn in the Heart (2009) isn’t likely to change either of those very much.It’s a project about…
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Film 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…
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Film Review: Machete
★★★☆☆ Machete (2010) is a feature length expansion of the brilliant, initially faux trailer that was spliced between director Rodriguez and buddy Quentin Tarantino exploitation homage Grindhouse (2007). Starring Danny Trejo as the titular character, with accompaniment from a host of recognisable names and faces, Machete is the tale of an ex-Federale who is double-crossed when…
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Barbican Film: Kurosawa Directorspective
Alongside legendary directors Yasujirō Ozu and Takeshi Kitano, Akira Kurosawa is often cited as one of Japanese cinema’s greatest exponents. With a career spanning six decades and numerous high profile awards including the Palme d’Or and Golden Lion to his name, London’s Barbican Centre has rightly dedicated an entire mini season to his superlative works, which also serves…
EIFF 2026