DVD Review: ‘Hidden 3D’
★☆☆☆☆ It has to be said that Antoine Thomas’ Hidden (2011) is unquestionably one of the worst films I have seen in a very...
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★☆☆☆☆ It has to be said that Antoine Thomas’ Hidden (2011) is unquestionably one of the worst films I have seen in a very...
★★★☆☆ It looks like a Monty Python movie; it sounds like a Monty Python movie; it’s got two Monty Python members in it. But...
★★☆☆☆ The Secret Laughter of Women (1999) is the first and only film to date from director Peter Schwabach and stars Colin Firth and...
★★★★☆ The increasingly popular hybrid sub-genre of the martial arts-western gets another entry in the form of Guy Moshe’s second feature, Bunraku (2010) –...
★★★☆☆ Set in the 1970s and showcasing the crème-de-le-crème of French film talent, Potiche (2010) is a lovingly nostalgic journey into the flamboyant films...
★★★★★ Whilst critics fell over themselves for Terence Malick’s metaphysical journey The Tree of Life (2011) there was another, less successful but in no...
★★★★☆ You hold a memory clear in your mind and then years later you meet someone who shared the experience with you, a family...
★★★★★ Four Days Inside Guantánamo (2010) is a breathtaking documentary from directors Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez that retells the heart-wrenching story of the...