FIlm Review
Film Review: Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
A global pandemic poses unique challenges for filmmakers. Each country has their own set of rules and regulation, which can change with little or no warning. How could it be possible to make a film within these parameters, ensuring the safety of the cast and crew was paramount? Many productions closed down. Others changed location …
Film Review: Piano to Zanskar
There’s something rather appealing, and slightly worrying, about an eccentric English gentleman. Clearly well-educated and from a ‘good stock’, he saunters through life with flights of fantasy; always willing to share his dreams and stories with anyone who will listen. Nowadays, the adventurer is a dying breed. Certainly, in the sense of undertaking unusual and …
Film Review: Drive My Car
Since the advent of moving pictures there have always been long films. Abel Gance’s 1927 classic Napoleon, for example, clocked in at well over five hours. However, what is often described as ‘slow-cinema’ has become increasingly popular. The likes of Béla Tarr and Lav Diaz have made careers out of creating dense and sedate films. …
Film Review: Ascension
China first opened up its economy for foreign investment and started to enact free market reforms at the end of the 1970s. Deng Xiaoping’s modernising agenda has resulted in the country becoming the fastest growing major economy in the world over a period of thirty years. It’s now second only to the United States and …
Film Review: Raging Fire
There’s something distinctly unique about Hong Kong action films. A mix of East and West which isn’t replicated anywhere else in the world. Much of this can be attributed to the complex history of the colony. With the territory’s film industry in the middle of a crisis, perpetrated by the Chinese authorities cracking down on …
Film Review: Uppercase Print
Of all the directors from the Romanian new wave who have made an impression on international cinema, it is perhaps Radu Jude who has been the most confrontational. And he seems to be getting angrier with age. With his latest, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, he tackles a modern social problem head on. However, …
Film Review: You Will Die at Twenty
Life in Sudan isn’t easy at the best of times, but the ongoing military coup highlights just how fragile human rights and democracy remain in the north-east African country. With an economy driven by oil production, there’s much to fight over, but any profits are only shared by the few. As is the case in …
Film Review: Natural Light
Despite what we might be led to believe, for the most part soldiering involves a lot of waiting around and generally doing very little other than simply being somewhere. This, for obvious reasons, does not often make for scintillating entertainment. Unsurprisingly then, most films that hit our screens either greatly lesson this aspect of war …
Film Review: Love It Was Not
Films about World War II, and particularly the Holocaust, tend to be very black and white. The Nazis were the bad guys and everyone else was just an innocent victim. While this is obviously true to a large extent, it certainly doesn’t tell the whole story. Indeed, casting it as a battle between good and …
Film Review: Red Heaven
As the Earth begins to falter at an increasingly accelerated rate, largely due to the abuses of humankind, the thoughts of many turn to the stars. While billionaires see space as yet another money-making opportunity, scientists have been focussing their attention way beyond the Karman Line. With our planet dying, the theoretical concerns around colonising …