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Archive for April, 2008

I’M A CYBORG

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

After three films that revelled in such dark issues as organ theft, incest and child kidnapping, wrapped in the key theme of revenge, it seems understandable that Park Chan-wook chose a lighter tone for his next project, the inventively titled I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK.
Review by James Merchant

FUNNY GAMES

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Michael Haneke has done a Gus Van Sant and remade his own controversial 1997 film almost frame for frame, only in a US setting and with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth as the hapless, well-off couple tortured by two freakily polite young men decked in immaculate white tennis outfits.
Review by Virginie Sélavy

PERSEPOLIS

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Satrapi’s depiction of herself as a forthright, stubborn and fanciful child who believes she is the next holy prophet and later dons a headscarf to march around her house chanting, ‘Down with the Shah’ is utterly enchanting. But disturbing also, insofar that the views of those around her can easily translate into misunderstanding and cruelty.
Review by Lisa Williams

SEX AND FURY / FEMALE YAKUZA

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Sex and Fury is a shining example of the peculiar potentials of exploitation cinema. It is thoughtful in ways that have nothing to do with chin-scratching; morally unencumbered, it is light on its feet in its exploration of some really quite daft desires.
Review by Stephen Thomson

EX-DRUMMER

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Adapted from cult Belgian liberal-baiting novelist Herman Brusselmans’ book, Ex-Drummer is the story of a disabled Ostend punk band who recruit a famous liberal-baiting novelist to be their drummer.
Review by Paul Huckerby

THE SIXTH OF MAY

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

It’s a bleak postscript to the political murder mystery The Sixth of May that director Theo Van Gogh was assassinated in 2004, the same year the film was released.
Review by Siouxzi Mernagh

LA NOTTE

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

La Notte’s drama is one of existentialist angst, with Antonioni on the psychological trail of two individuals who find themselves alienated from their lives and each other in a world which needs them to give it meaning.
Review by Peter Momtchiloff

SABOTAGE

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

As this box-set shows, by the 1930s Hitchcock was already a master filmmaker. Alongside those Saturday afternoon favourites The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes are some less well-known but equally great films - particularly Young and Innocent and Sabotage - films that are as good as, and often better than his American work.
Review by Paul Huckerby