Film
SnowdenMonday, 05 December 2016
As an old Sixties lefty brought up on paranoia-infused thrillers like The Parallax View or All the President's Men, Oliver Stone loves ripping open great American conspiracies. However, in contrast to his earlier labyrinthine epics Nixon and JFK,... Read more... |
Sully: Miracle on the HudsonFriday, 02 December 2016
The pilot and the sniper have a lot in common for Clint Eastwood. In his previous US blockbuster, American Sniper, Chris Kyle’s cool shooting under pressure helped extract his comrades from overwhelming assault in Iraq, as part of at least 160 kills... Read more... |
The Unknown GirlFriday, 02 December 2016
The Dardennes brothers' latest tale from the grim streets of the industrial suburb of Liège in Belgium is another quietly powerful masterpiece; it’s perhaps their best film since The Child. Re-edited since it debuted at Cannes to mixed reviews, it... Read more... |
DVD: TickledFriday, 02 December 2016
This story drops down the rabbit-hole so fast, you doubt it’ll ever hit bottom. Kiwi TV presenter David Farrier’s human interest items of the That’s Life/One Show sort led him to feature “competitive tickling” videos. His interest drew... Read more... |
Chi-RaqThursday, 01 December 2016
“This is an emergency. Homicides in Chicago, Illinois have surpassed the death toll of American special forces in Iraq.” This news bulletin forms the opening of Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, pronounced Shy-Rack, a stylised, bombastic take on the gang... Read more... |
DVD: The Music of StrangersThursday, 01 December 2016
A welcome antidote to the mood of a time which seems hell-bent on closing borders and building walls, The Music of Strangers is about a unique musical collective that breaks through division and reaffirms the potential of culture to unite. Subtitled... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Odds Against TomorrowSaturday, 26 November 2016
Robert Wise directed the 1959 bank heist thriller Odds Against Tomorrow after the classic film noir cycle had ended, but it's an exemplary noir nonetheless. In its day it was an important transitional work – a race-relations allegory... Read more... |
PatersonFriday, 25 November 2016
Back in the 1980s Jim Jarmusch was a breath of fresh air. He made quiet, quirky films about young urban Americans that dispensed with the prevailing neon-bright high school romances, jocks and suburbia. He was about as far removed from the John... Read more... |
AlliedThursday, 24 November 2016
While it makes for a moderately amusing evening out, this World War Two espionage-romance caper doesn't stand up to a lot of scrutiny (I'm trying to work out where they managed to find the "Best Film of the Year!" quote used in the TV ad). Stars... Read more... |
The IncidentWednesday, 23 November 2016
A pale young girl – we see her blurred reflection in a window – is hanging out at a pizza joint. She follows a customer, Joe, a handsome young architect, out to his car, where he’s waiting for his order, and flirts with him, smoking and... Read more... |
A United KingdomTuesday, 22 November 2016
It's remarkable that the story of Seretse Khama, the king of Bechuanaland, isn't more popularly known, though Amma Asante's film may change all that. The movie opens in a smoggy, gloomy London in 1947, where Seretse (David Oyelowo) is completing his... Read more... |
DVD: The Lovers & the DespotTuesday, 22 November 2016
What to do if you’re a despotic leader with an underperforming film industry? Hiring better directors and actors wasn’t an option for Kim Jong-il in the late 1970s, so he took drastic action: luring South Korea’s biggest female star Choi Eun-hee to... Read more... |
