Comedy hit Antoinette in the Cévennes was one of the most popular films at this year’s Alliance Française French Film Festival. Thanks to Madman Entertainment, Caroline Vignal’s wonderful misadventure of hiking with a donkey and chasing after love is now … Continue reading REVIEW: Antoinette in the Cévennes (2020)
William Shakespeare has inspired filmmakers since the very origins of the form. Starting with Dixon and Dando’s King John in 1899, there have been in excess of 400 films produced that are either adapted from or inspired by Shakespeare’s work. While the … Continue reading REVIEW: As We Like It (2021)
Disney’s live-action adaptations of their animated back catalogue has now expanded so much as to come full circle: returning to the ghoulish villain Cruella de Vil, famously played by Glenn Close in the two 101 Dalmatians remakes in 1996 and … Continue reading REVIEW: Cruella (2021)
There are certain actors that, when placed into a feature film, automatically make it better. They are often not big Hollywood stars – although they often appear in big Hollywood movies. They are perhaps not all household names – although … Continue reading REVIEW: The Impostors (1998)
In February 1983 Tsui Hark’s Hong Kong fantasy Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain brought Hollywood visual effects to Hong Kong fantasy cinema, revolutionising the form and invigorating the genre. Yuen Woo-ping’s comedic fantasy The Miracle Fighters was released seven months earlier, … Continue reading REVIEW: The Miracle Fighters (1982)
Ahn Gooc-jin makes one hell of an impression with Alice in Earnestland (2015), a pitch-black South Korean comedy. At times the film feels a more more pitch-black than it does a laugh-out-loud comedy, but it uneven tone aside this is not a … Continue reading REVIEW: Alice in Earnestland (2015)
Zombie movies have always been an excellent outlet for social comment. George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) famously used the shambling masses to interrogate consumerism. Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) traded on public fears over a viral outbreak – a … Continue reading REVIEW: Get the Hell Out (2020)
Nothing dates a film comedy like its representations of mental health. The Dream Team, a 1989 comedy directed by Howard Zieff, offers the 21st century viewer a choice: you can criticise it for its crass use of mental illness to generate … Continue reading REVIEW: The Dream Team (1989)
To my mind, Tropic Thunder (2008) is the boldest, strongest, and flat-out funniest comedy that Ben Stiller has directed. While it satirises an easy target – Hollywood excess – it does so in such a savage and unrelenting fashion that on some … Continue reading REVIEW: Tropic Thunder (2008)
Like most, I can do the arithmetic and see that Charlie Chaplin’s extended short Sunnyside is 102 years old. Despite this it just feels wrong. I grew up in the last quarter of the 20th century, and cinema was still heralded at that century’s … Continue reading REVIEW: Sunnyside (1919)
