My last two days at the film festival were nothing but mellow (what, no wild parties in Cannes?), and have completely resigned to seeing one film per day. Which means missing out on the new Spike Lee joint, the new Star Wars, the new Robert Mitchell, the latest Chang-dong, Gonzalez and Ceylan. Reading back that sentence alone […]
No amount of Cannes adrenaline rush could ever make me feel super enthusiastic waking up at the crack of morning to catch an 8.30 screening of a major film in competition. Being a film critic on the Croisette means being first in the cinema and the last one out, watching films back-to-back, and typing some […]
Love affairs can be enduring. Some are more short-lived than most. Cannes Film Festival, for me, was the one that got away. I thought I’d never be back here again. I popped my festival cherry back in 2013; and after a brief run, just like a passionate spring-summer romance, life whirled me away into different […]
Ah, what a time to be alive. Don’t you just truly, genuinely, appreciate the fact that you and I (and everyone reading this joint) are all awake and breathing right now after what the world has put us through this year? Everything from Trumpocalypse to hurricanes, to mass shootings and refugee crisis, from Harvey Weinstein […]
What a hell of a year. Just in case you thought I disappeared into the Great Cosmic Limbo, here I am, still on track, treading on Earth but now living continental style. I’ve officially Brexited (or rather exited from Brexit), left the island last summer and moved to the dazzling Iberian peninsula where the sun […]
Whatever the hell Martin Scorcese’s been smoking these days, I’m not having any of it. Spouting untruths like a proclaimer of gospels, he righteously preaches “Cinema is gone!”, after which millions of over-stressed celluloid fanatics faint in unison. Who doesn’t love Marty, he’s a messiah of cinema, but to erroneously claim that great filmmaking have long forsaken our parched […]
The Year 2016 was a year we’d all love to hate. Alright, ‘hate’ is too strong a word and there’s certainly too much of that in our planet already. Nonetheless, we might as well eschew 2016 A.D., reduce it into a blip or a little fart in the history of our species for once again, more than any other year, humankind proved its incurable capacity for Grand Idiocy.
There’s nothing like an autumn season film festival that can drag me out of my hole than London Film Festival, this frenetic city’s premier twelve-day movie marathon. OK, it’s not exactly as prestigious as Cannes, or as glorious as Berlin or Venice, but this festival injects the much-needed High Art and Cinematic Joy to Londoners and visitors alike […]
Now that I’ve finally emerged from the turkey coma season and reluctantly dragged my arse back to my desktop, it’s that part of the calendar again to swiftly assemble the previous year’s Greatest Hits list just because there isn’t really anything else worth in this dreary, freezing month of January to get out of bed […]
To us, cinephiles, there’s rarely anything better to do at this butt-end of the year than to gaze back at the great and glorious time we’ve all had at the cinema and celebrate the best works that graced our silver screens throughout the calendar year. Where the rest of humanity are mindlessly splashing over seasonal […]
Unless you’ve been recently binge-watching all of the hot messes involved in Hollywood’s Annual Grand Carnival of Self-Congratulatory Wankery aka the Oscars, subsequently rendering you incapable of seeing real cinematic masterpieces beyond the Best Foreign Film category – chances are, you’ll know that a film called Mommy is out this month. You’ll also know that […]
No year is complete without a supervillain. And no, I’m not talking about Scott Rudin or North Korea. In this annus mirabilis in cinema, no one else has royally fucked-up the movie experience quite as viciously as Harvey Weinstein. If you’ve been paying attention for the last twelve months, a handful of high-profile films barely […]
It’s nearly the end of the year, and everyone from Sight & Sound to John Waters are each coming up with their own best films list. Hardly anyone has the last word on this, not even Quentin Tarantino, hence each list is as fascinating as the next. It’s a sport widely exercised by film critics […]
It is exactly four decades since Jacques Tati’s final film Parade was released into public consciousness in 1974, an effort that marked the end of the renowned French comic actor and director’s career. He didn’t manage to finish another full-length feature before his death in 1982, and while Parade played out of competition in Cannes […]
Grace of Monaco is released this weekend, and for those in-the-know, Olivier Dahan’s take on Grace Kelly’s regimented and conflicted Mónegasque, post-Hollywood life has recently been under fire in Cannes Film Festival last month, blowtorched with a hellfire of bile and one-stars enough to topple any actor’s career. The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw called it a […]
So, the funster Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the Palme d’Or for his snoozefest Winter Sleep, the only film I’ve seen in Cannes this year where I actively engaged in a ten-minute power-nap halfway through its 196-minute slog. I wonder which one of the Grand Jury did the same. Hands up, anyone? Or perhaps all of […]
Are you feeling under the weather? Stuck in a rut, or perhaps working a crappy job, flipping burgers just to pay for your astronomical monthly rent for a crumbling urban shithole you’re living in? How about feeling disappointed with everything in life – a monster for a boss, a clutch of superficial friends, student loans […]
One of the most haunting films to play in the BFI London Film Festival last year, Pawel Pawlikowski’s sombre tale about identity, self-discovery and the burden of family history in post-World War II Poland didn’t only win the festival’s major prize but it carried on, sending quiet tremors in my psyche even until now. And […]
In celebration of the DVD release of Dylan Mohan Gray’s ferocious documentary Fire in the Blood, The Moviejerk is giving away two (2) DVD copies to our lovely, loyal readers – courtesy of UK film distributor Network Releasing. Only recently, we’ve handed copies of the similarly-themed doc How To Survive A Plague (congrats to those […]
To all unaware folks of London (or the world, for that matter), the BFI Southbank lit up momentarily over the last ten days, celebrating the best of what LGBT cinema has to offer to this bustling city. Today sees the festival’s final bow until next year’s programme, so while many are sipping the last drops […]
