Film
Veronica Lee
It's probably no coincidence that non-American reviewers have been less exalted in their praise for this film than US ones, as it's sort of in a foreign language for them – that of baseball, a sport in love with nerdy statistics and clichés, even more than American football is, which is saying something. And it's true to say that if you don't have a passing acquaintance with baseball there will be large stretches of this film, and much of its narrative, that you will have not a clue about. But them's the parts where you just drool over Brad Pitt.In Bennett Miller's slow-moving but engaging Read more ...
emma.simmonds
A police procedural played out over a long dark night of the soul, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is the magnificent sixth feature from Turkish writer / director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys, Uzak). So much more than a simple thriller, it transforms a murder investigation into something gratifyingly profound and perversely beautiful; its grizzled, largely unfamiliar faces and their tales of woe will remain with you long after the end credits roll. Swathed in scintillating sadness and infused with life’s grim realities, it’s lit up by bursts of black humour and an overwhelming sense of Read more ...
ash.smyth
Put your hand up, please, if you’ve seen the multi-award-winning movie Blood Car. No? Fair enough. It was ostensibly released about two weeks ago – “in selected cinemas” – but you can be forgiven for not having tripped over any posters.Blood Car is (if one were feeling incredibly generous) the Napoleon Dynamite of the slasher-eco-vehicular-comedy-porn genre. It is the very near future – “like, two weeks from now” – and no-one can afford to run a petrol vehicle any more. Well-meaning vegan kindergarten-teacher Archie is working on a wheatgrass prototype engine (believe me when I tell you that Read more ...