Review

By Gaël Schmidt-Cléach. Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible opens with a title card reminding us of the tsunami of December 2004 and of its 230,000 victims, followed by the announcement that the film is based on true events. Then the text fades away until all that’s left are the words […]

By Cleaver Patterson. There was a time when the inclusion of 3D in a film title suggested a degree of novel originality. Unfortunately those days are long past with the process now used in horror films to produce little more than substandard cliché shocks, beggaring the question why Texas Chainsaw […]

By Cleaver Patterson. It’s here! After a nine year hiatus in director Peter Jackson’s continuing cinematic visualization of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epics chronicling the adventures of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), starring Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman has eventually arrived. The big question is was […]

By Jacob Mertens. In history classes, we follow the path of society from one war to the next, from one tragedy to another. Slavery and a civil war bleed into the Holocaust and the assassination of JFK, and so on. Eventually we come to rest on a current climate of […]

By Robert Kenneth Dator. The title of this review, lifted from the publicity tagline, assumes the pitch of a midway barker outside the hoochie-coo tent at a wheat belt carnival. “See for yourself! She teases the imagination; he prods the curious, which is everyone, little lady, to take a peek! […]

By Jacob Mertens. In a town buried in the jungles of Grenada, there stands a small cocoa production facility. Inside, Mott Green tinkers with equipment in a frenetic way that recalls the image of a mad scientist bringing some creation to life. However, what Green brings to life is cocoa. […]

By Matthew Sorrento. All artists reach a point when they want to make their good work great. The intention was right for William Faulkner, whose novel Flags in the Dust was cut down by his agent and publisher, into the much tamer Sartoris. Knowing he was holding back even in […]

By Christopher Sharrett. Ben Lewin’s The Sessions is not a great film, and its status as a good one may in part be due to its circumscription by yet another dreadful “holiday season” of superhero films, juvenile fantasy, and feel-good family comedies. But the film is commendable for its remarkable […]

By Cleaver Patterson. There are some films which everyone, whether they’ve seen them or not, has an opinion on. Virtually everything which fell under the auspices of ‘Video Nasties’ – the notorious witch hunt against a grouping of violent, sadistic and gore soaked films mainly from the late 1970’s and […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Some films have an air of effortless style which others can only dream about. The Man in the White Suit (1951), directed by Alexander Mackendrick and produced by the revered Michael Balcon for Ealing Studios, is one such film. Starring company regulars Alec Guinness and Joan Greenwood, […]