“The Empire Strikes Back” – 30 years on
Like an old soldier reluctant to talk share war stories, I’ve always been somewhat reticent to disclose my service to the “Star Wars” saga over the last thirty odd years. Not that I’m...
Category: Film and movies
2010 New York Asian Film Festival: melodrama perfected
With its lavish, sumptuous production design and attention-grabbing camerawork “Bodyguards and Assassins,” which makes its New York debut at this year’s New York Asian Film Festival is...
Black Death: the horror of religion
“In the year of our lord 1348” you can almost taste the plague ridden corpses. Swollen, black and teeming with rats, humanity is rotting into the ground one peasant at a time. Has God forsaken...
“Rec 2” – gore and social commentary
“Rec 2” doesn’t muck about. From the off Spanish directors Jamie Balaguero and Paco Plaza get straight down to business as they sling us into the back of a SWAT van with four heavily armed...
“Presumed Guilty” at the 2010 Human Rights Watch festival
“Presumed Guilty” is the title of this year’s closing night doc at the 2010 Human Rights Watch Film Festival, a co-presentation of Human Rights Watch and The Film Society of Lincoln Center that...
Disinterment on the Killing Fields: “Enemies of the People” at the 2010 Human Rights Watch Film Festival
Having taken home the 2010 Sundance World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Prize earlier this year, “Enemies of the People,” Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath’s subtle look inside the atrocities of...
“One Night in Turin”: resurrected football, resurrected pasts
1990. Football was as dead as Dillinger in England. Heysel, Hillsborough, Bradford - each appalling tragedy was another stake though the heart of the national game and a pin in the voodoo doll of...
“Four Lions”: terrorism and uncomfortable laughter
What exactly is a “home grown terrorist?” Young Muslims cloned in specially controlled vats hidden in secret greenhouses under guard day and night from elite seven-foot tall Al Qaeda warriors?...
Centurion: the perils of empire make for good cinema
Early on in Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian” the Emperor Hadrian, now 60, muses, “This morning it occurred to me for the first time that my body, my faithful companion and friend,...
The Killer Inside Me stands out at Tribeca Film Fest
The Tribeca Film Festival, Robert De Niro’s annual glam-fest on the Hudson, is glitzy and obnoxious and very L.A. – which is exactly why I enjoy covering it. It’s like traveling to the West...