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Czech100: Barefoot review
★★★★☆ Based on the autobiographical novel by Zdenek Svěrák, and co-directed with Zdenek and his son Jan, Barefoot tells the story of eight-year-old Eda (Alois Grec), who is taken to live with his extended family in the country after his city-dwelling parents resist collaboration with the occupying Nazis. A prequel to Jan Svěrák’s 1991 feature debut, The Elementary School, Barefoot brings…
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Czech100: Bear with Us review
★★☆☆☆ Director Tomás Pavlíchek’s follow-up to 2014’s Parádne Pokecal, is a sweet and broadly entertaining comedy drama which sadly falls shy of its mark. Centred around the final, fateful weekend that the Czech family will stay in their old holiday cottage, Bear with Us is charming but unfocused. The film opens in the moments before Ivana Chýlková’s…
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MAMI 2018: Fugue review
★★★☆☆ In Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska’s fantasy-infused psychological drama Fugue, a woman loses her memory following a traumatic incident and comes back to her old life with a radically new personality. The crisis arises not when she attempts to reconcile with her past, but rather when she doesn’t. Trauma literally changes the protagonist of Fugue.…
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Czech100: Our picks of the festival
To mark the centenary of the Czech Republic’s independence, the Czech100 Festival runs from 28 October to the 9 December, a celebration of Czech art, design, fashion, theatre and of course film. The Made in Prague film strand of the festival runs from 2-4 November. Fans of the 1996 film Kolya, which won the Academy Award for…
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DVD Review: Jackie Chan’s Project A and Project A Part II
★★★★★ Hong Kong megastar Jackie Chan is as prolific as they come – last year alone, the 64-year-old had eight acting credits to his name – but it was 1983’s Project A which not only solidified his reputation back home, but it also brought him a legion of fans in the west, after his aborted…
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Film Review: Too Late to Die Young
★★★★☆ Too Late to Die Young, the third feature from Chilean filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor Castillo, is a tale of growing up in a commune amidst nature and simpler ways of living. Having little by way of plot, the film has a gentle, freewheeling quality, focusing instead on experiences, moments and sensations. Too Late to Die…
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MAMI 2018: Hotel by the River review
★★★☆☆ Shot in muted black and white, South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s Hotel by the River lets two stories – one about a poet getting ready to die and the other about a woman recovering from heartbreak – unfold gently through idle conversations against a winter setting. At one point in Hotel by the River, an aging father explains to his two…
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MAMI 2018: Our picks of the festival
With the 20th edition of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star well underway, film professionals and cinema lovers flock to theatres across the city to get a taste of some of the year’s best international and regional fare. Vasan Bala’s Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (The Man Who Feels No Pain) which premiered…
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Film Review: Possum
★★★★☆ Best-known as the mind behind horror spoof series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Matthew Holness’ debut feature Possum is anything but comic. Indeed, the imagery Holness conjures here could almost have come from the deranged imagination of Marenghi himself, were it not for that character’s chronic lack of talent. Luckily for us, the writer-director proves with the chillingly atmospheric Possum that…
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Film Review: Shirkers
★★★★☆ Sandi Tan’s luminous and shape-shifting documentary Shirkers is a journey back in time through the 16mm reels and sinister true story of the long-lost indie movie of the same name that she shot in Singapore over 25 years ago. It’s kind of fitting that this film lands on Netflix just prior to Halloween. A…
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