DVD Review: Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton
Stones Throw Records was founded by Chris Manak (Peanut Butter Wolf). Based in Los Angeles, California, the avant-garde independent record label is run with the ethos that if Wolf likes it, they’ll release it. Since its inception in 1996, and building a reputation largely around hip hop until fairly recently, Stones Throw have released music …
DVD Review: Inside Llewyn Davis
The idea behind Inside Llewyn Davis began with a single premise: Suppose Dave Van Ronk got beat up outside of Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village. Taking that as their starting point, and basing the titular character very loosely on Van Ronk himself, the Coen Brothers wanted to make a film that was set just …
Film Review: The Two Faces of January
Patricia Highsmith is a criminally underrated American novelist, probably best known for the film adaptations of her work. Her first book, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted several times (most famously by Alfred Hitchcock), but it’s probably The Talented Mr Ripley for which she is most renowned. It has also been adapted several times, …
Incoming: A Touch of Sin
Written and directed by master filmmaker Jia Zhangke (The World, Still Life), this daring, poetic and grand-scale film focuses on four characters, each living in different provinces, who are driven to violent ends. An angry miner, enraged by widespread corruption in his village, decides to take justice into his own hands. A rootless migrant discovers …
Incoming: Godzilla
The monster movie isn’t dead, it’s GODZILLA. Directed by Gareth Evans, who made the extraordinary low budget Monsters, Godzilla stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, and Bryan Cranston. By all accounts, it’s likely to be the best blockbuster of the year. Godzilla is out in cinemas this weekend
Incoming: The Two Faces of January
A glamorous American couple, the charismatic Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen) and his alluring younger wife Colette (Kirsten Dunst), are in Athens during a European vacation. While sightseeing at the acropolis they encounter Rydal (Oscar Isaac), a young, Greek-speaking American who is working as a tour guide, scamming female tourists on the side. Drawn to Colette’s …
DVD Review: Man of Marble
Andrzej Wajda is a leading light of the Polish Film School and the most prominent Polish filmmaker. He’s received Academy Award Nominations for Best Foreign Language Film for The Promised Land, The Maids of Wilko, Man of Iron, and Katyn, and was awarded an Honorary Oscar 1999. Man of Marble, and its sequel Man of …
Film Review: The Wind Rises
Since 1985 Studio Ghibli has been producing beautiful animated films, and thankfully over the last decade the West has begun to appreciate their magic. Co-founder and leading light Hayao Miyazaki’s is unquestionably the greatest animator of all time, producing such marvels as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away and …
DVD Review: The Incident
The Incident is not a film you’re likely to be familiar with: Odds on you’ve never heard of it before. Starring a young Martin Sheen in his first film role, Larry Peerce’s film is an edgy look at the state of a crumbling society in the US in the late ‘60s which seemed to almost …
DVD Review – An Inspector Calls: 60th Anniversary Edition
Whilst An Inspector Calls began life as a play, it translates seamlessly onto film. Written by J.B. Priestly in the 1940s, it’s widely considered one of the classics of English mid-20th century theatre. Due to a strong writing, universal themes and a successful revival s by Stephen Daldry in the 1990s, it’s still touring and …