Maleficent

For this revisionist revisitation, Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty is merely a point of departure. The two relate glancingly enough that they’re almost ships in the night. The formerly mysterious and unmotivated villain Maleficent, self-proclaimed ‘Mistress of all Evil’, is this time

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Maleficent

For this revisionist revisitation, Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty is merely a point of departure. The two relate glancingly enough that they’re almost ships in the night. The formerly mysterious and unmotivated villain Maleficent, self-proclaimed ‘Mistress of all Evil’, is this time

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Blue Is the Warmest Colour

This could be called An Ordinary Romance if it weren’t about two girls. They meet, they love, things run their unsurprising course. But not only does it work, it works for three hours straight and wins a Palme d’Or.

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Blue Is the Warmest Colour

This could be called An Ordinary Romance if it weren’t about two girls. They meet, they love, things run their unsurprising course. But not only does it work, it works for three hours straight and wins a Palme d’Or.

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Under The Skin

A disappointing adaptation that barely scrapes the surface of Michel Faber’s masterful and understated alien-incursion novel. The initial scenario is the same but Faber’s themes of class and industrial ethics are discarded in favour of more familiar gender politics, alien

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Under The Skin

A disappointing adaptation that barely scrapes the surface of Michel Faber’s masterful and understated alien-incursion novel. The initial scenario is the same but Faber’s themes of class and industrial ethics are discarded in favour of more familiar gender politics, alien

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Performance (1970)

An art movie, a drug movie, a Mick Jagger acting debut, Nicolas Roeg’s directing debut, a late, post-swinging 60’s bohemian manifesto, but underpinning all that one of the best British gangster flicks around. It features a foulmouthed, thuggish, head kicking

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Performance (1970)

An art movie, a drug movie, a Mick Jagger acting debut, Nicolas Roeg’s directing debut, a late, post-swinging 60’s bohemian manifesto, but underpinning all that one of the best British gangster flicks around. It features a foulmouthed, thuggish, head kicking

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Pandora’s Promise

This unabashedly pro-nuclear documentary makes a good case, or rather an already well established case, that we need to find, by yesterday, a viable alternative to fossil fuels given the current dangers to human survival presented by combustion power. The

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Pandora’s Promise

This unabashedly pro-nuclear documentary makes a good case, or rather an already well established case, that we need to find, by yesterday, a viable alternative to fossil fuels given the current dangers to human survival presented by combustion power. The

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Spring Breakers

Four american college girls on spring break take time out from underdressing and pouring alcohol inside and outside their bodies to engage in bouts of organised and and disorganised crime. In the latter half of the film they team up with

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Spring Breakers

Four american college girls on spring break take time out from underdressing and pouring alcohol inside and outside their bodies to engage in bouts of organised and and disorganised crime. In the latter half of the film they team up with

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Her

Technologically mediated relationships are the setting but not entirely the point here, because it seems Her is actually the first great movie about the technological Singularity since that term entered common parlance. And the idea being couched as a love story, albeit

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Her

Technologically mediated relationships are the setting but not entirely the point here, because it seems Her is actually the first great movie about the technological Singularity since that term entered common parlance. And the idea being couched as a love story, albeit

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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

By now you’re on board with this story or you’re not. Everything about the latest interstitial from middle earth feels like a middle, an entertaining if thinly plotted hero’s journey between the last Hobbit movie and the next. On HFR

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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

By now you’re on board with this story or you’re not. Everything about the latest interstitial from middle earth feels like a middle, an entertaining if thinly plotted hero’s journey between the last Hobbit movie and the next. On HFR

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The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

This devotional piece from Martin Scorcese (based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis) wavers between inspired moments of heresy and long stretches of being just another Jesus movie. While in its way wholly respectful to the prophets, it disrespects sacred

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The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

This devotional piece from Martin Scorcese (based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis) wavers between inspired moments of heresy and long stretches of being just another Jesus movie. While in its way wholly respectful to the prophets, it disrespects sacred

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Elysium

Another film about the rich seeking to purge themselves of the poor, taking their bat and baubles and exclusive health care and going home, or in this case moving to an orbiting space station. It’s a disappointing second outing for

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Elysium

Another film about the rich seeking to purge themselves of the poor, taking their bat and baubles and exclusive health care and going home, or in this case moving to an orbiting space station. It’s a disappointing second outing for

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The Purge

Extrapolated a few degrees sideways into a parallel future, America has undergone some kind of reboot. The ‘new founding fathers’ have reclaimed the night for freedom, the expression of which is an annual holiday where law and order are suspended

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The Purge

Extrapolated a few degrees sideways into a parallel future, America has undergone some kind of reboot. The ‘new founding fathers’ have reclaimed the night for freedom, the expression of which is an annual holiday where law and order are suspended

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Gravity

It’s rare for a movie to sustain a high level of tension for its entire running length. Gravity achieves this feat by playing in real time, or close to it, opening with a set piece that clocks in at 13

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Gravity

It’s rare for a movie to sustain a high level of tension for its entire running length. Gravity achieves this feat by playing in real time, or close to it, opening with a set piece that clocks in at 13

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Star Trek Into Darkness

The rebooted Trek franchise is already feeling like a dog-gnawed sneaker. One of the few still-twinkling christmas lights in JJ Abrams’ otherwise overstretched and underbaked portfolio is boldly going nowhere at the second instalment. Benedict Cumberbatch makes an arresting and articulate

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Star Trek Into Darkness

The rebooted Trek franchise is already feeling like a dog-gnawed sneaker. One of the few still-twinkling christmas lights in JJ Abrams’ otherwise overstretched and underbaked portfolio is boldly going nowhere at the second instalment. Benedict Cumberbatch makes an arresting and articulate

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Upstream Color

It’s not every day you get to puzzle out a serious experiment in cinematic narrative, so here’s your chance. Crimes are committed using some sort of telepathising mind-worm and two victims get together to solve, revenge and repair what was

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Upstream Color

It’s not every day you get to puzzle out a serious experiment in cinematic narrative, so here’s your chance. Crimes are committed using some sort of telepathising mind-worm and two victims get together to solve, revenge and repair what was

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World War Z

The zombie genre’s relentless advance achieves infection of the upper hollywood echelons as Brad Pitt goes the way of the axe and the head shot. Zombiedom’s transmutation from resurrection to viral plague now seems complete (when was the last time

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World War Z

The zombie genre’s relentless advance achieves infection of the upper hollywood echelons as Brad Pitt goes the way of the axe and the head shot. Zombiedom’s transmutation from resurrection to viral plague now seems complete (when was the last time

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Blue Jasmine

It seems Woody Allen fans found Blue Jasmine to be the offering that did the most for quite some time to satisfy them, while doing the least to meet their expectations. It is one of the bleakest films in his

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Blue Jasmine

It seems Woody Allen fans found Blue Jasmine to be the offering that did the most for quite some time to satisfy them, while doing the least to meet their expectations. It is one of the bleakest films in his

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Evil Dead (2012)

Cold turkey and demonic possession – two great things that go great together? Uruguayan youtube prodigy Fede Alvarez’s revisitation of Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead story is overworked and laden with backstory, tortured childhoods, personal journeys, and plans that really

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Evil Dead (2012)

Cold turkey and demonic possession – two great things that go great together? Uruguayan youtube prodigy Fede Alvarez’s revisitation of Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead story is overworked and laden with backstory, tortured childhoods, personal journeys, and plans that really

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Frances Ha

Though brushed by Fame and bearing a translucent overlay of Manhattan and and its Parisian forebears, Frances Ha seems for the most part to have spilled out of Lena Dunham’s Girls-iverse, its female protagonist in an extended tragi-comic freefall toward

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Frances Ha

Though brushed by Fame and bearing a translucent overlay of Manhattan and and its Parisian forebears, Frances Ha seems for the most part to have spilled out of Lena Dunham’s Girls-iverse, its female protagonist in an extended tragi-comic freefall toward

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The Place Beyond the Pines

A new Ryan Gosling vehicle that isn’t a fastback 2008 Bullitt Mustang. So is it the sequel to Blue Valentine, given this is the same director? Or is it Drive, given he’s a badass on a motorbike trying to muscle

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The Place Beyond the Pines

A new Ryan Gosling vehicle that isn’t a fastback 2008 Bullitt Mustang. So is it the sequel to Blue Valentine, given this is the same director? Or is it Drive, given he’s a badass on a motorbike trying to muscle

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Oblivion

If you don’t mind your futuristic production design looking like an off the plan real estate brochure, Oblivion is a watchable post-catastrophic sci-fi. Humanity appears to have moved out of home, Tom Cruise and his assigned companion (Andrea Riseborough) are ensconced in

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Oblivion

If you don’t mind your futuristic production design looking like an off the plan real estate brochure, Oblivion is a watchable post-catastrophic sci-fi. Humanity appears to have moved out of home, Tom Cruise and his assigned companion (Andrea Riseborough) are ensconced in

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