Cinema
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Attempting to review Birdman, the new film from Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, is somewhat trepidatious, not least because midway through the film, troubled protagonist Riggan Thompson launches into a bile-spewing tirade… Read More
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One of the most talked-about films this year in the run-up to awards season, The Theory of Everything is an adaptation of Jane Hawking’s book about her understandably strained relationship… Read More
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Interstellar is quite possibly Christopher Nolan’s most personal film to-date, a grand spectacle of deep space exploration involving wormholes and theories of relativity, but which ultimately rests on the relationship… Read More
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I’m a sucker for watching older films restored on the big screen, so the fact that the Hong Kong Film Archive is currently screening a series of classic World War… Read More
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Gone Girl looks very much like a David Fincher film, with its washed out colour-palette, earthy hues and now-obligatory Reznor/Ross soundtrack, but it sure doesn’t play like one. Fincher has… Read More
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The Expendables 3 accomplishes an almost impossible task, managing to be the most enjoyable entry in the franchise so far, while simultaneously breaking almost every rule of Stallone’s original mission… Read More
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Nick Cheung follows a string of critical and commercial hits with his debut as writer-director, a seasonal horror flick in which he also takes the leading role. While Cheung has… Read More
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The fourth instalment of Michael Bay’s big screen robot romp offers few surprises but an abundance of the series’ familiar tropes in another marathon-length, narratively vapid action spectacular. Bay’s trademark… Read More
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Following the success of Masquerade last year, South Korea has rediscovered its taste for period drama chamber pieces, and Lee Jae-gyu’s The Fatal Encounter more than delivers, both in dramatic… Read More
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Definitely has moments of laugh out loud humour throughout, but in between (and some of the gaps between laughs are agonisingly long) we are forced to watch what is simply… Read More
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This seventh instalment in the X-Men franchise doesn’t make a lick of sense but I still found it to be good fun, not least in its valiant efforts to tie… Read More
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Zhang Yimou returns to his more humble, socially conscious roots, reuniting with former muse Gong Li for an earnest, if rather underwhelming, adaptation of Yan Geiling’s The Criminal Lu Yanshi.… Read More
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An operatic crime epic that’s as beautiful in its calm moments as it is brutal with its action. I discuss the film in more detail with Fernando on the podcast… Read More
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Taiwanese teen romance about the college princess, worshipped by every boy on campus, who is rescued from a dried up lake by the most awkward geeky guy imaginable. However, this… Read More
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True story of small-town injustice that saw an entire community turn on a group of teenage weirdos after three young boys are found horrifically murdered. With no real evidence beyond… Read More
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Hong Kong’s reigning champion of pyrotechnic mayhem continues to move outside of his comfort zone with the psychological crime drama That Demon Within, but the results fail to hit the… Read More
The James Marsh film review archive 