Berlin Film Festival – National Bird – Review

Reviewed by Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada “It's not science fiction”, says the US Air Force recruitment video. And thousands of young Americans are seduced by the idea of adventure and honour and join up. Like Heather, whose job it was to analyse drone imagery. All day long she'd watch Afghans go about their daily lives, trying to make out if they were civilians or targets. She'd watch them be blown to pieces, she'd watch civilians die, soldiers die. Even though she...

Berlin Film Festival – Midnight Special – Review

Reviewed by Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada A young boy is kidnapped and sped along the highway through the Southern US States in a 1970s Chevrolet. But his kidnappers are his father and a good friend, saving the boy from religious fanatics. Nothing is what it seems in Midnight Special. Slowly we learn what is special about young Alton Meyer, why both the FBI and a religious cult are interested in him, why he is wearing protective goggles and is never allowed...

Berlin Film Festival – Hail, Caesar! – Review

Reviewed by Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada The opening film of the Berlin Film Festival, is an unambiguous celebration of film - Joel and Ethan Coen take on Old Hollywood in their newest all-star comedy, Hail Caesar. Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a studio "fixer", runs from one emergency to the next in the chaotic world of the film business in the early 1950s, the later years of Hollywood's golden age. He gets the stars out of trouble, appeases irate directors, and keeps...

DVD Review: Jean-Luc Godard – The Essential Godard Blu Ray Boxset 

Review by Miranda Schiller/@mirandadadada   Enfant terrible of French Cinema, driving force of the Film Noir and Nouvelle Vague movements, Godard is the name you drop when wanting to appear knowledgeable and Europhile. And with good reason. Time to revisit (or discover) some of his most influential films in this newly released Blu Ray box set. It certainly gives an indication of Godard's bandwidth of themes and artistic expressions, from his most well-known, the iconic Breathless, to the gloomy dystopia Alphaville,...

Chronic : Film Review

Review by Adam Turner/@AdamTurnerPR Happy, uplifting and easy-watching Chronic is not. In fact, It's more like being drenched by a cannon loaded with misery. However, Michel Franco's melancholic drama does help to bring to attention some of life's most agonising realities - from cancer and HIV to euthanasia, death and everything in between. Franco, best known for the disturbing After Lucia (2012), should be commended for bravely confronting such anxiety-provoking issues - many of which are seldom portrayed through the...

Film Review: A War

Review by Miranda Schiller/@mirandadadada Claus (Pilou Asbaek) is the commander of a Danish unit in Afghanistan. He wants to do right by everyone: The local population - he strongly believes in the purpose of his mission to protect and support them, and tries as he might to build a trusting relationship with the locals. His soldiers - he is careful to personally connect to each of them and to stay on their level, not keeping himself out of the danger...

Dope : Film Review

By Leslie Byron Pitt @Afrofilmviewer To utilise the vernacular that Dope uses, the soundtrack to Rick Famuyiwa’s fourth film is well…Dope. A quick glimpse of the film credits should have a viewer spy the names of Sean “Puffy” Combs and Pharrell Williams as executive producers. The film is filled with so many nineties hip-hop gems, it’s hard not to nod your head. There’s so much music, that the non-diegetic sound becomes wall-to-wall. It becomes distracting. Almost enough to forgo the...

In the Heart of the Sea : Film Review

Review by Ellery Nick @Ellery__Nick Brendon Gleeson plays Thomas Nickerson, last survivor of a doomed whaling voyage. He sets Ben Whishaw on his knee to recount his boyhood adventures and unburden himself of a dark secret. They occupy a spot lit space on the periphery of director Ron Howard’s story, which is set many years in the past. Whishaw is Herman Melville, a yet-to-be famous novelist who is consumed by talk of whales and sets about pumping Nickerson for the...

Love : Film Review

By Leslie Byron Pitt @Afrofilmviewer It’s often said that you don’t watch porn for its plot. The same can certainly be said for Gaspar Noe’s indulgent Love. For all it’s on screen ejaculation and 3D Penises thrusting out at the audience, Noe cannot hide that this is a tediously overlong piece with an under baked plot. While Love is certainly a more sensitive and personal film in comparison to previous features (I Stand Alone (1998), Irréversible (2002), Enter the Void...

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