With such punchy jokes, breakneck pacing and a bankable celebrity voice cast, it doesn’t really matter whether or not Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted is a good third installment to the successful Dreamworks franchise, as it certainly won’t be the last. If the first episode was considered tame, then Madagascar 3 is a much wilder beast. There’s no time for exposition, but considering the previous two films have raked in a combined $1 billion… Read More »
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Review: Pusher
Relishing in the unprecedented success of last year’s Drive, Danish filmmaker Nicholas Winding Refn started out in 1996 on much smaller terms, breaking the crime drama mould with a brawny tale of a Copenhagen drug dealer on the verge of breaking point. Two sequels later, Pusher is heralded as a cult classic, so it’s about time we had the inevitable English-language remake. Much like Ryan Gosling’s spin as The Driver in Refn’s last… Read More »
Review: Husbands
A rightfully restored classic or unearthed hipster trash? This difficult comedy-drama from the front-running American auteur John Cassavetes uses a stellar cast and meandering improvisation to create a capricious study on middle aged, middle class suburbia. For a ramshackle, partly improvised movie, it starts with a surprisingly promising narrative arc. After the death of their fourth musketeer, friends Archie, Harry and Gus, (Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara and Cassavetes himself) go through… Read More »
Review: Santa Sangre
Chilean-born Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1989 film is, somewhat expectedly, a total mind fuck of a movie. Like his hedonistic seventies works El Topo and The Holy Mountain (which was funded by a little-known Liverpudlian musician called John Lennon, no less), Santa Sangre is one man’s mystical and uncompromising journey through the dark depths of the human psyche; gripping the audience by the figurative balls and swinging you into realms that most artists shy away from. A Mexican demimonde… Read More »
Review: Keyhole
As Canada’s answer to David Lynch, Guy Maddin is one of cinema’s last standing avant-garde filmmakers, carrying the baton from his cherished contemporary Luis Buñuel. But Maddin’s tenth feature film could be his most accessible film to date: it actually has a cohesive plot. Keyhole is a loose adaptation of various greek tragedies told with a film noir edge. Forgotten nineties film star Jason Patric stars as Ulysses, a gun… Read More »
Review: To Rome With Love
After a career resurgence with the Oscar-baited fluke Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s continental cruise across Europe sees him back in familiarly disappointing territory with To Rome With Love. His seventh film set in picture-postcard Europe, it’s a set of four unconnected vignettes serving up the schmaltzy themes of love, lust and celebrity, minus the laughs. From the very opening scene, To Rome With Love wreaks of amateur hour. An affable cop halts the… Read More »
Review: About Elly
Set for rerelease after Asghar Farhadi’s peerless, Oscar winning A Separation last year, About Elly (Darbareye Elly) is it’s less impactful predecessor, dealing with the similar themes of deceit, contempt and gender politics in Iranian society. A bit of a reviewer’s nightmare, About Elly is a movie best approached uninitiated. I’ll tread carefully. A group of middle class Iranians – made up of families and two singletons – head to a beachside villa for a summer getaway…. Read More »
