Feature Essays
“I am here now because of you” | King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
This is a story that takes more than eight years to tell. It begins with a Hollywood studio electing to mount an all-new screen adaptation ...
REVIEW: For Sama (2019)
Documentary filmmaker Waad al-Kateab is in the Syrian city of Aleppo when its citizens begin a civil uprising that leads to a five-year siege on the city by Russian and Syrian military forces. Through helping to establish a makeshift hospital, to finding love, facing tragedy, and giving birth to a daughter named Sama, she continues ...
REVIEW: The Constable (2013)
Kuen (Simon Yam) is a commander in charge of the Kowloon police vehicle pool. By day he supports Hong Kong's police officers in their duties, and by night he returns by bus to Shenzen to care for his intellectually challenged son. In a series of vignettes and encounters, Kuen assists his colleagues, fights random crimes, ...
REVIEW: Dreams for Sale (2012)
In an outer suburb of Tokyo, Kanya Ichizawa (Sadawo Abe) and his wife Satoko (Takako Matsu) own and operate a popular local restaurant. When a freak accident sees their restaurant burn down, they are inconsolable. Satoko does her best to make ends meet by working in a nearby ramen shop, but Kanya slips further and ...
REVIEW: The Bird People in China (1998)
Regular readers of this website will likely be aware of my love for director Takashi Miike. He is one of Japan's most versatile directors, jumping from genre to genre pretty much on a film by film basis. He seems as comfortable making a drama as he is a comedy, or a horror film, or a ...
REVIEW: Inside (2007)
After surviving a car accident that kills her husband, a grieving and heavily pregnant Sarah (Alysson Paradis) spends Christmas Eve alone in her house, located in a French suburb rife with rioting youths. When a mysterious woman (Beatrice Dalle) arrives on her doorstep demanding she be let in, it sparks off a long night of ...
REVIEW: 1917 (2019)
April 1917, on the western front of World War I. Aerial reconnaisance by the British armed forces has revealed an apparent German retreat is a tactical withdrawal intended to ambush the British army several miles down the line. With telephone connections severed, Lance Corporals Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay) are ordered to cross ...
REVIEW: Life (2017)
On the International Space Station, a team of astronauts and specialists receive soil samples from a Martian probe. Inside they discover proof of life on Mars: a single-celled organism. Once attempts to stimulate it result in the creature's rapid growth, it breaks free of containment and begins killing the astronauts one by one. Another day, ...
