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10 articles
Blu-ray Review: 'Totoro, Grave of Fireflies' (rerelease)
3 hours ago
★★★★★ If there's one studio reboot that seems immune to criticism (and today, we're lumped with about ten per week) it's Japanese animation guru Hayao Miyazaki's heartwarming My Neighbour Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, 1988). Partially, its success is all in the timing. In the 1970s, animé was moulded for television, therefore slight, local and far from spectacular. Miyazaki took off in a different direction, angling for a new feature film audience and an international one at that - both of which he earned after exploding the commercial market with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika, 1984).
Set in rural Japan, 1958, Totoro follows two young girls, Mei and Satsuki, as they relocate to the country to be closer to their hospitalised mother (a throwback to Miyazaki's own childhood). Curiously, the girls encounter Totoro, a lovably owlish creature who leads them on fantastical adventures through the forest, providing »
- CineVue UK
Blu-ray Review: 'Kiki's Delivery Service' (rerelease)
3 hours ago
★★★★★ The trials and tribulations of teen witches and wizards have become worldwide phenomenon. Unlike Mildred Hubble or Sabrina Spellman, however, the eponymous heroine of Kiki's Delivery Service (Majo no takkyûbin, 1989) is spared the hassle of concealing her powers. The opposite, in fact: 13-year-old Kiki is obliged to leave home for a year as part of her witch training to find a new town and hone her skills. Heading to a coastal city, Kiki founds a delivery service, turning her ability to fly a broomstick into a source of employment. Based on a novel by Eiko Kadono, this Ghibli heartwarmer is now available on Blu-ray.
Kiki's Delivery Service doesn't have the spiritual weirdness of Hayao Miyazaki's later masterpieces Princess Mononoke (1997) or Spirited Away (2001), nor the sweeping scale which characterised both his earlier and later work. In place of an epic adventure, Kiki's is a more episodic, character-driven piece that succeeds »
- CineVue UK
Blu-ray Review: 'Kuroneko' (MoC)
5 hours ago
★★★★☆ The latest welcome addition to the Masters of Cinema's growing Kaneto Shindô catalogue, the cult Japanese director's 1968 film Kuroneko (Yabu no naka no kuroneko) feels like the near-perfect partner piece to his demonic earlier effort, Onibaba. Celebrating both pictures' atmospheric, effortlessly sensual and often terrifying feudal Japan-set ghostly narratives, the restoration and ongoing preservation of these two mini masterworks has rightly helped the late Shindô to earn the kind of acclaim and reverence previously reserved for iconic figureheads such as Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu.
Loosely based on the Japanese folktale The Cat's Return, Kuroneko begins with the brutal rape and murder of a poverty-stricken mother and daughter-in-law (Nobuko Otowa and Kiwako Taichi) at the cruel hands of a pillaging band of low-life samurai. Brought back from the dead as vengeful, vampiric cat spirits, the unholy duo take it upon themselves to prey on wayward soldiers trespassing across their accursed place of rest. »
- CineVue UK
Eiff 2013: 'The Last Time I Saw Macao'
16 hours ago
★★★☆☆ The critical success last year of Miguel Gomes' Tabu (2012) and fresh appreciation for the works of Pedro Costa and Raoul Ruiz has seen Portuguese cinema quietly re-introducing itself on the festival circuit. Continuing this trend, João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata's The Last Time I Saw Macao (2012) opens with a magnificent dance routine set in front of caged tigers, before venturing down a rather more ambiguous course. The last Chinese outpost to be handed back to its owners, Macao was previously a Portuguese administrative region. Once a gateway to the East, it's now a monument to the West.
Our window into this world is Guerra da Mata, a former resident who's returning to his homeland in response to a letter of distress he receives from an old friend, Candy - who may have been involved in a murder. Drenched in memories and past regrets, his »
- CineVue UK
DVD Review: 'Apocalypse Z'
17 hours ago
★☆☆☆☆ Luca Boni and Marco Ristori's abysmal Apocalypse Z (2013) makes recent Brad Pitt blockbuster World War Z (2013), which tried manfully (if impotently) to transpose the walking dead to the mainstream, look like an Oscar-worthy literary adaptation. This slice of Dtv schlock is truly woeful in every way imaginable - and then some. There's really not much of a storyline here, so let's not dwell on it for long. Suffice to say that a group of Neanderthal mercenaries are sent to a remote part of Eastern Europe by the American government, after an accident at a research plant turns the local populace into flesh-eating zombies.
Under the impression that they're there to wipe out the evidence by planting a nuclear bomb, the gang of ex-criminals soon discover that they've been-double crossed by the powers-that-be - and that the zombies are actually the least of their worries. So, let's dissect the evidence »
- CineVue UK
DVD Review: 'Confine'
1 July 2013 6:08 AM, PDT
★★☆☆☆ A great way to keep costs low, the single location setup has long been a keen ally of the no-budget filmmaker. The key, however, is to find a credible reason for people not to leave. It's a theatrical device safe in the hands of Tobias Tobell, as at home directing for the stage as for the screen, and his aptly-titled thriller Confine (2013). With a protagonist suffering from acute agoraphobia, there's almost no compunction to venture outside the walls of her swanky London apartment, but ultimately a bit of fresh air might have done the plot a little good. We follow reclusive Pippa (model Daisy Lowe), who hasn't left her home in years.
A socialite with a modelling career she suffered serious injuries in a car crash which brought on debilitating psychological trauma that prevents her from stepping outside her front door. Her familial relationships are strained and she finds solace in friends found online. »
- CineVue UK
DVD Review: 'F*ck for Forest'
1 July 2013 3:54 AM, PDT
★★☆☆☆ Polish director Michal Marczak's awkwardly titillating documentary F*ck for Forest (2012) is extraordinary viewing. Dressed like a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome flashmob, a troupe of capricious Berlin-based eccentrics film themselves having sex with each other and semi-willing volunteers. The videos are then made available by subscription via their website. The price for our perversions, we are told, is invested in environment protection and supporting the company's ecological cause. Yet, while a subject-matter so bizarrely seductive is bewitching to behold, F*ck for Forest shows potential without a point.
The blinding narcissism at the heart of this band of sexual liberals rapidly deconstructs the political message (if any) they intend to promote. Twirling and gyrating around in their semen-stained rags, the group approach bemused foreigners under the pretence of 'spreading the love' in the name of ecological activism. What Marczak captures instead is almost disheartening. A shrewd crew of very »
- CineVue UK
Competition: See 'The Lone Ranger' early
1 July 2013 3:33 AM, PDT
From producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski, the filmmaking duo behind the blockbusting Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, comes Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer Films' The Lone Ranger (2013), a thrilling adventure infused with action and humour, in which the famed masked hero is brought to life through new eyes. To celebrate the 9 August UK release of The Lone Ranger, we're giving you and a guest the chance to see the film in London a month before everyone else (on 10 July) with Five pairs of tickets up for grabs. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue before answering the question below.
In this new version of The Lone Ranger, Native American warrior Tonto (Johnny Depp) recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid (Armie Hammer), a man of the law, into a »
- CineVue UK
DVD Review: 'Maniac'
1 July 2013 2:07 AM, PDT
★★★☆☆ William Lustig's 1980 sleazy shocker Maniac saw the American director compile a serial killer narrative not from the point of view of a pursuing detective, but that of the murderer himself. In updating said original nasty, screenwriters Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur have gone one step further and sought to place their audience directly in the head of the film's homicidal mannequin obsessive. Directed by Franck Khalfoun, Maniac (2012) relocates the action from New York to Los Angeles and, more importantly, presents the story from the killer's actual point of view with the camera serving as the madman's eyes.
Elijah Wood plays Frank, replacing the original's Joe Spinell in this slick, if not especially necessary rehash. Frank (Wood) is a lonely guy living in La; by day he restores mannequins in a shop left to him by his mother, in the evening he finds them suitable hairpieces and adds to his own private collection. »
- CineVue UK
DVD Review: 'Stoker'
1 July 2013 12:02 AM, PDT
★★★☆☆ After a decade of filmmaking in his native South Korea, Park Chan-wook makes his English-language debut with Stoker (2013). An all-star cast led by Mia Wasikowska and a screenplay from Prison Break's Wentworth Miller may suggest that this was to be a triumphant relocation for Park - yet the film doesn't quite deliver the unambiguous success one might hope. India Stoker's (Wasikowska) 18th birthday celebrations are interrupted by news of her father's death in a car accident. At the funeral, her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) appears, announcing that he'll be staying with India and her mother (Nicole Kidman).
There's something off about Charlie; India seems both fascinated and repulsed by her uncle, while her mother, Evelyn, seems to flirt shamelessly with her husband's handsome brother. The scene is set for an intense family drama, augmented by slight hints of some superhuman senses that India seems to have. The feverish »
- CineVue UK
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