Reviews in a nutshell
American artist-turned film-maker Julian Schnabel’s latest film, Miral, is on a far grander scale than the intimate The Diving Bell and the Butterfly about a stroke sufferer, dealing with the political hot bed of peace in the Middle East. Jewish American Schnabel takes the Palestinian stance on this, in an almost pious and worthy fashion …
This sombre, humane and provocative drama from Xavier Beauvois (Don’t Forget You’re Going To Die) is based on a true story from the 1990s. Eight French monks live in harmony in a Cistercian monastery in North Africa, providing medical, practical and spiritual help to the local community. But fundamentalist violence threatens not only the country …
It’s great to come away from a film and feel genuinely challenged by what you’ve seen. It’s even more rewarding when that film is a debut offering that isn’t just trying to jump on the pretentious, holier-than-thou indie bandwagon and actually has a point to make in a non-confrontational manner. Low-budget dark horse Easier With …
If you can ‘stylise’ a film about cancer, director Reinout Oerlemans’ Love Life would be it. Interestingly, this Dutch film was originally called Stricken (2009), which doesn’t particularly seem to fit the sexy, hedonistic stance that the film portrays, and certainly wouldn’t have the majority of punters rushing to the cinema to see it. It’s …
Oscar-winning The Departed writer William Monahan’s directorial debut, London Boulevard, is one of those films that prompts the immediate reaction of ‘hmmm’: You really don’t know how to process what you’ve just seen – unless you’re an avid Colin Farrell fan, so can be rest assured that his sexy charm is in full flow in …
Forget the troublesome Pelham of 2009: Action guru Tony Scott and his muse Denzel Washington are firmly on the right tracks with this year’s adrenaline-fuelled thriller, Unstoppable, that really hits the mark, despite triggering an initial groan of yet another potential train-wreck of a movie on the cards. After suppressing giggles from hearing that there’s …
Don’t be fooled by the action sequences they squeeze out of the film for the trailer to try marketing this as an action-based crime thriller: it’s no Bourne. It is a part-foreign-language drama set in foreign lands – making it perfect London Film Festival fodder – that cleverly manages to straddle both art-house and mainstream …
Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy finally comes to a cinematic end, and the only thing worth knowing is whether Daniel Alfredson’s finale, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest, does justice to the spellbinding novel in tying up the loose ends. It does, to a certain extent, providing a relatively engaging and much-needed justice server at …
Continue reading “The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest – 3*”
There’s been an eager wait by fans for this film’s release, since it’s ‘fake’ trailer featured in Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse that starred its charismatic and craggy-faced lead, Danny Trejo, back in 2007. Now Machete in full form has finally arrived, having been conceived years before the former, and Rodriguez and co-director Ethan …
