Film
Blu-ray: ViySunday, 14 March 2021
Released in 1967, Viy (Вий) was the first horror film to be produced in the USSR. Based on a novella by Gogol that draws from a multitude of folkloric tropes, Viy is more disquieting than chilling, though several sequences still unnerve. Konstantin... Read more... |
Verdict review - social realism and court procedural combine in powerful Manila dramaSaturday, 13 March 2021
There’s something of an anomaly in Filipino director Raymund Ribay Gutierrez’s debut feature between its fast-moving dramatic opening, defined by an agile hand-held camera, and the much slower, more static scenes that follow. That early material,... Read more... |
Wander Darkly review - bold psychodrama falls shortSaturday, 13 March 2021
Like the sun-happy LA of this film’s setting, there’s a hard-to-pinpoint sham quality to Wander Darkly. It feels like too much phoney dialogue crept in to the final script of this “serious” film by writer-director Tara Miele. Sienna Miller is a... Read more... |
The Columnist review - taking out the trollsFriday, 12 March 2021
There aren't many unforgettable moments in The Columnist, but one occurs when the eponymous Dutch journalist Femke Boot (Katja Herbers) clambers from the skylight of her house and, unseen by her middle-aged neighbour (Rein Hofman), who's doing DIY... Read more... |
Mouthpiece review - double entendre in TorontoWednesday, 10 March 2021
Cassandra and her sister – or perhaps they’re friends or lovers – seem extraordinarily in tune. Like choreographed dancers, they move precisely in unison, down to tripping over their scarves at the same moment or flopping drunkenly into bed together... Read more... |
Blu-ray: LinkTuesday, 09 March 2021
Man’s strange relationship with other species haunts this freaky simian horror film from Psycho II director Richard Franklin. Terence Stamp is Dr Phillips, an archetypal, lab-coated mad scientist, grumpily testing the limits of ape intelligence, and... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Marlene Dietrich at Universal 1940-1942Sunday, 07 March 2021
Her glory years as the muse of Josef von Sternberg long gone, Marlene Dietrich had been labelled “box-office poison” and was sulking on the French Riviera when the producer Joe Pasternak summoned her back to Hollywood to star opposite James Stewart... Read more... |
Berlinale 2021: Petite Maman review – magical musings on the parent-child relationshipSaturday, 06 March 2021
Hot on the heels of her 2019 triumph Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma’s fifth feature continues a perfect track record; this is yet another gorgeous and perceptive film, told from a determinedly female perspective but with a wisdom... Read more... |
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliche review - memorialising her motherSaturday, 06 March 2021
There was always something a little diffident about teenage Marion Elliott-Said, who created her on-stage persona Poly Styrene after putting together her band X-Ray Spex from a small ad in the back pages of the NME in 1977. Male fans and the music... Read more... |
Coming 2 America review - Eddie Murphy returns as African Prince AkeemFriday, 05 March 2021
Eddie Murphy – one of the biggest stars of the 1980s – has taken his time in making a sequel to the enormously successful Coming to America, which was released in 1988. In that film, directed by John Landis, Murphy played another of his cheeky,... Read more... |
Into the Darkness review - disappointingly soapy Danish WWII dramaFriday, 05 March 2021
Can a film be both too long and too short? If so, Into the Darkness definitely fits the bill. Anders Refn’s long-nurtured family epic follows Karl Skov (Jesper Christensen, more famous as a Bond villain), a self-made Danish industrialist... Read more... |
Berlinale 2021: Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn review – cheeky, timely and very provocativeThursday, 04 March 2021
The Romanian director Radu Jude invariably serves spicy satire that challenges his compatriots to face historical crimes and present failings. The latest is an erudite and daft, raunchy and knockabout, endlessly provocative film that, for sake of... Read more... |
