DVD Review: ‘A Film with Me in It’
★★☆☆☆ Irish director Ian Fitzgibbon impressed us last year with Perrier’s Bounty (2009), a darkly funny crime thriller which drew inevitable but fair comparisons...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★☆☆☆ Irish director Ian Fitzgibbon impressed us last year with Perrier’s Bounty (2009), a darkly funny crime thriller which drew inevitable but fair comparisons...
★★★★☆ Starring Robert De Niro and a young Leonardo DiCaprio (in his first leading role), Michael Caton-Jones’ This Boy’s Life (1993) is the emotive tale...
★★★★☆ Director Andrei Zvyagintsev broke onto the scene with his remarkably assured 2003 debut The Return, a visually alluring and emotionally engrossing story of...
★★☆☆☆ Spandeux Ballet star Martin Kemp’s debut feature Stalker (2010) (not to be confused with the 1979 Andrey Tarkovskiy film of the same name)...
★★☆☆☆ Rumours are currently swirling around the internet as to the identity of the ‘Surprise Film’ at this year’s 55th BFI London Film Festival,...
★★★☆☆ You know those long awkward car journeys you use to have as a kid in a foreigner’s car, crossing the border from Paraguay...
★★★★★ Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has been a Cannes favourite since his debut film Koza won the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film...
★★★☆☆ With such a broad and sweeping title, When China Met Africa (2010) is an ambitious project to undertake by sibling filmmakers Nick and...