Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Hirokin (2011)

Hirokin (2011)
This release seems to be titled Hirokin: The Last Samurai, but I am just going to follow the simpler IMDb.com listed title of Hirokin (which is also the printed title on the DVD screener reviewed here), because the samurai bit makes no sense. This is a low-budget sci-fi/fantasy movie that takes place...
May 1st, 2012 | DVD Reviews | Read More

The Raid: Redemption (2011)

The Raid: Redemption (2011)
Martial arts movies have been wildly popular in Southeast Asia for decades. First there were the early Shaw Brothers adventures in the ‘50s and ‘60, then came Bruce Lee and his fists of fury, making the genre ten times as big and exporting it to Western audiences, and then, in the ‘80s, Jackie...
April 30th, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)
As soon as this remake of the popular Swedish movie was announced you could hear the hissing of dissent, the sharpening of knives and the flicking of thesaurus pages as people tried to find new words to construct old and familiar complaints. Yet there was also something different about this one, something...
April 30th, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

Angèle and Tony (2011)

Angèle and Tony (2011)
I imagine this is the French equivalent of one of Mike Leigh’s gloomy British kitchen sink dramas. Holding, as I do, an unfashionable aversion to Mike Leigh’s films, this might have made for a trying evening, but the continental insouciance of all concerned alleviated the gloom quite nicely...
April 30th, 2012 | Feature, Film Reviews | Read More

Silent House (2011)

Silent House (2011)
I hated this movie. Well, I hated the first hour, at any rate, and when I realised it had no intention of trying to get better, I walked out. I was not the first person in the screening to do so. The film is, in its way, technically ambitious, the whole thing ostensibly a single [...]
April 30th, 2012 | Feature, Film Reviews | Read More

Goodbye, First Love (2011)

Goodbye, First Love (2011)
Honest look at early passion Hansen-Løve’s first two films tackled subjects like family dissolution, addiction, and suicide. Her delicate, intelligent, naturally cinematic treatment of such challenging material has established her, at 30, as one of today’s best young French filmmakers....
April 30th, 2012 | Feature, Film Reviews | Read More

The Arriviste (2012)

The Arriviste (2012)
$9,500 seems like a lot of money, unless you’re making a movie with it, which is exactly what one-man film crew Pascal Santschi did with his début effort, The Arriviste; a black comedy about a guy whose brother causes him more trouble in death than he ever did in life. The film’s protagonist,...
April 30th, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

Scabbard Samurai (2010)

Scabbard Samurai (2010)
A ’ronin’, famously, is a masterless samurai, but what do you call a swordless samurai? Why, you call him Scabbard Samurai, of course! The title character in this samurai comedy is named Kanjuro Nomi, but he has almost no dialogue. His wife died in an epidemic, and now he sadly and swordless wanders...
April 29th, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

Terraferma (2011)

Terraferma (2011)
A small island off the coast of Sicily is home to a small community of fishermen and other villagers, most of whom make their living by catering to tourists. The tourists come for the climate and love to hang out at the beach. Every early morning, the locals are picking up the trash that has [...]
April 29th, 2012 | Film Reviews | Read More

The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2011)

The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2011)
Wow. If you are at all interested in mythologically based fantasy, with plenty of magic, demons, comedy, romance, kung fu and senses-shattering special effects of the highest magnitude, you quite simply gotta see this movie. It is cute and beautiful and full of grand spectacles. Just jaw-dropping. It...
April 29th, 2012 | Feature, Film Reviews | Read More
Page 3 of 15712345102030...Last »