Film Review: ‘Real Steel’
★★★★☆ Everything about Real Steel (2011) reeks of epic failure. The trailer is horrific, Hugh Jackman hasn’t made a decent film since Christopher Nolan’s...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ Everything about Real Steel (2011) reeks of epic failure. The trailer is horrific, Hugh Jackman hasn’t made a decent film since Christopher Nolan’s...
★★★☆☆ Prepare to swash your buckles, or whatever dashing matinee idols do these days. Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson – and starring Orlando...
★★★★★ Tilva Ros (2010) is easily the finest film of this year’s Raindance Film Festival and outside of that favourable context, still one of...
On Tuesday 4 October, CineVue were invited to the official launch of the Bristol Encounters 17th International Film Festival, where we were given an...
The 55th BFI London Film Festival 2011 is nearly upon us (make sure you visit our coverage section here from the 12th onwards), so...
★☆☆☆☆ In today’s economically stringent times, there is no excuse for something as woefully inept as Evil Things (2009), the debut from director Dominic...
★★☆☆☆ You feel bad disparaging a film such as Matching Jack (2010), the new drama by award winning director Nadia Tass, and starring such...
★★★☆☆ Jean Reno: the coolest man with facial hair alive. Except in The Dead List (AKA Inside Ring, 2009), he has no beard. He’s...