Cannes 2013 Review: Takashi Miike's SHIELD OF STRAW Gets Middling Results From High Concept
There are so many ways in which Takashi Miike's Shield of Straw falls short of being the knockout that it could have been, it's hard to know where to start. The script alone could easily inspire a novella detailing all... More »
  

Cannes 2013 Review: BLOOD TIES Knots Up 1970s New York
To call Guillaume Canet's Blood Ties a love letter to the 1970s is a bit of an understatement. The Clive Owen, Billy Crudup brothers-on-opposite-sides-of-the-law drama absolutely oozes with 1970s nostalgia from its impeccable costume and production design to its almost... More »
  

Cannes 2013 Review: BORGMAN Fiendishly Recounts The Time The Devil Went Up To Holland
The titular character of Alex van Warmerdam's Borgman does not have horns, nor does he command grotesque demons spawned from hellfire. Emaciated, clothed in rags with long hair and a beard, he actually looks a lot like Jesus at first.... More »
  

Review: DOCTOR WHO S7E14, THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR (Or, Things Get Dark And Interesting In An Excellent Finale)
Steven Moffat has made a great number of promises throughout the seventh series of Doctor Who. I was unsure whether he'd really be able to write a satisfying answer to the mystery of Clara but "The Name of the Doctor"... More »
  

Cannes 2013 Review: BLUE RUIN Or, Revenge Is A Pain In The Ass
Besides the fact that I doubt we'll see a more deft, thrilling genre film this year, I'm very pleased that Jeremy Saulnier's Blue Ruin addresses a number of issues that revenge films have been overlooking for decades. For example, after... More »
  

Cannes 2013 Review: Anurag Kashyap's UGLY Is a Riveting Thriller About Awful Things
Anurag Kashyap's follow-up to the widely admired Gangs of Wasseypur announces itself with a cacophony of discordant noise screeching over an attempted suicide. It's almost as if Kashyup decided to warn viewers up front, this one won't be easy. And,... More »
  

Cannes 2013 Review: Ozon's YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL Finds New Problems With Sexual Awakenings
Just when it seemed that every single movie about teen girls coming to terms with their sexuality had already been made, here comes François Ozon's Young and Beautiful (Jeune et Jolie), a well-observed, often fascinating exploration of a 17-year-old girl's willful entry... More »
  

Review: DOCTOR WHO S7E13, NIGHTMARE IN SILVER (Or, An Underwhelming Episode Sees The Doctor Battle Cybermen While Irritating Kids Tag Along)
Neil Gaiman's previous scripting effort, "The Doctor's Wife," is acknowledged as one of the strongest episodes of recent Doctor Who, effortlessly feeling like something that fits very naturally into the show's past while giving us a fresh spin on something... More »
  

Review: SIGHTSEERS Delivers Black Hearted Laughs
If there is one thing the English north has a great deal of, it is space. Space and rocks. Both of which are put to extensive use by Tina (Alice Lowe) and Chris (Steve Oram) as the new couple partakes... More »
By Todd Brown   
  

MSPIFF 2013 Review: THE DEEP Is A Modest, Well-Made Adventure
Baltasar Kormakur's The Deep is one of those rare examples of a fictionalized true story that doesn't ooze with exaggerated melodrama for false effect. Kormakur (101 Reykjavík, the excellent Jar City, and Reykjavík-Rotterdam remake Contraband) crafts a plainspoken tale of... More »
  

Hot Docs 2013 Review: THE EXPEDITION TO THE END OF THE WORLD Asks Big Questions in Wide Open Spaces
Specifically, the eponymous End of the World is a place: The northern shores of Greenland that have been inaccessible due to ice-locked waterways, which now, due to changing climes, are open for a mere few weeks a year to such... More »
  

MSPIFF 2013 Review: THE FIFTH SEASON's Apocalypse Hits Freakishly Close To Home
There is no denying that contemporary audiences are obsessed with the on-screen fantasy of all-out social breakdown. And with the exception of the poor humanoids being innocently victimized by interplanetary sadists, most cases involve our own maligned inventions retaliating and... More »
  

Review: SOMETHING IN THE AIR Inspires Youthful Passion And Energy
At the outset, Olivier Assayas's Something in the Air is a biographical nostalgia piece about growing up in the aftermath of the May '68 events in France. But what it really is, is a social experiment in which 18-19 year... More »
  

Review: POST TENEBRAS LUX Brings The Devil Home
As I review more and more films out of festivals, I'm beginning to notice a pattern: I'm much more forgiving and enthusiastic about films that shoot for the moon and fall somewhere short than with serviceable movies trodding well-worn territory... More »
  

MSPIFF 2013 Review: 80 MILLION Is A Cerebral Cat-And-Mouse
80 Million, Poland's 2012 candidate for Best Foreign Language Film, teases of a bank heist but delivers a cerebral, dialogue driven cat-and-mouse. The dramatic retelling of the anti-communist groundswell in 1980s Poland delves head first into the politically and... More »
  

IFFR 2013 Review: IXJANA Injects Giallo-like Color And Weirdness Into Film Noir.

(If I did THIS much sex, booze and drugs together on one evening: yep, unfortunately I'd forget stuff as well...) Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski is no stranger to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which even honored him a few years... More »
By Ard Vijn   
  

Review: DOCTOR WHO S7E11, JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE TARDIS (Or, Mysteries And Secrets Fuel An Exploration Of The Doctor's Time Machine)
The notion of discovering more about the Tardis will always be enticing. It's essentially a big box full of secrets and there's so much about it that I'd love to discover or at least have explained in more depth. To... More »
  

Review: Baring Body And Soul In Ulrich Seidl's PARADISE: FAITH
The second installment of the Paradise Trilogy by Austrian provocateur Ulrich Seidl, Paradise: Faith premiered at the Venice Film Fest last year (Love at Cannes 2012 and Hope at the Berlinale 2013). And it will be screening as a part of... More »
  

Review: PARADISE: LOVE Illuminates Complex Emotional Truths
Ulrich Seidl's Paradise: Love, the first in his trilogy of "paradise" films (next up is Faith followed by Hope), is a confrontational, often ugly depiction of different forms of desperation and exploitation set against a sex tourism backdrop, and indeed,... More »
  

Tribeca 2013 Review: FLOATING SKYSCRAPERS, The First Polish LGBT Film, A Boldly Intimate Story of Forbidden Desire
Floating Skyscrapers is described by its director Tomasz Wasilewski as the first LGBT Polish film, which makes the film itself as taboo-breaking as its main characters themselves, who struggle to assert their desires, and their right to express them, in... More »
  
 
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Featured Articles

Twitchvision: Talking STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS, MUD and THE ICEMAN

Another Twitchvision chat with Scott Laurie, this time me gushing about J.J.'s latest Star Trek film, which I unabashedly loved.Also talked about he fabbo Mud, and the less fabbo The Iceman, both with Michael Shannon doing his thing.Video embedded below.... More »

Learning from the Masters of Cinema: Henri-Georges Clouzot's THE MURDERER LIVES AT 21

While Henri-Georges Clouzot is best remembered for many of his later films, including The Wages of Fear and Diabolique, the French filmmaker's 1942 debut has gone largely unseen by Western audiences until now. The Murderer Lives at 21 (L'Assassin Habite au 21), based on the novel by Belgian author Stanislas-Andre... More »

China Beat: What did China See in IRON MAN 3?

Much has already been written, both on these pages and many others, about the landmark Hollywood-China co-production that is Marvel and DMG Entertainment's Iron Man 3. The film, directed by Shane Black, is the third solo outing for Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark, and has proved a phenomenal success around... More »

FEAR & LOATHING AT CANNES, PART 2: I'M IN LOVE WITH EVERYBODY'S GIRL

CHAPTER 4: THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANNA KARINA AND BUTT PLUGSI'm sitting outside at a small Café that my editor told me to meet him at. I'm a 10 minute walk from the Marche Du Film convention hall and I'm still waiting for my editor to arrive so he take guide... More »

CINEMA HOLOCAUST ON THE FRENCH RIVIERA, PART 1: THOSE GOD DAMN FILM BLOGGERS

MIKE'S JOURNAL. MAY 13. MORNINGI wake up sometime around five AM. My flight to France doesn't leave until five PM. I should be there for security check in sometime around 3PM. There is no reason for me to be up this early but I'm feeling anxious. I have an itch... More »
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