Reviews by Anton Bitel

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Like Crazy (2011)

  Review preview for Like Crazy

  Offers plenty of uncomfortably familiar observations for anyone engaged in a relationship that is either long-distance, or just long-term.

  A British student and an American find their love tested by a long-distance relationship.
• 
  Pariah (2011)

  Review preview for Pariah

  Pariah is not apologetic or even coy about the high school senior's lesbianism, nor is it graphic or titillating in presenting it.

  A teenager juggles conflicting identities and endures heartbreak in a desperate search for sexual expression.
• 
  Headhunters (2011)

  Review preview for Headhunters

  It is the black comedy that is the real surprise, rescuing Headhunters from both Norwegian dourness and Tinseltown blandness.

  Adaptation of Jo Nesbo's bestselling Norwegian thriller about a headhunter who moonlilghts as a thief.
• 
  This Must Be The Place (2011)

  Review preview for This Must Be The Place

  Funny, moving and endlessly surprising.

  An oddball retired rock star takes a roadtrip across America inspired by his dead father.
• 
  Two Years At Sea (2011)

  Review preview for Two Years At Sea

  If this is a character study, there is little character in it.

  A portrait of Jake, an outsider who lives in the wilderness of his own creation.
• 
  The Future (2011)

  Review preview for The Future

  The Future starts off eccentrically enough, before descending into unbridled zaniness, all to the feyly plangent strains of Jon Brion's score.

  The offbeat and funny story of a couple whose modern romance starts to change as they wonder about their future.
• 
  Bernie (2011)

  Review preview for Bernie

  Like the man after whom it is named, is joyously camp and colourful, and not a little eccentric – even unhinged.

  Based on a true story. Jack Black stars in Richard Linklater's playful treatment of the strange story of a Texan funeral director.
• 
  Hollow (2011)

  Review preview for Hollow

  Hollow unfolds more like a brutal psychodrama than a horror, but is perhaps none the worse for that.

  A group of friends visiting an old house are increasingly disturbed by the tales associated with the sinister tree outside.
• 
  Urban Explorers (2011)

  Review preview for Urban Explorers

  Edited, directed and shot by Andy Fetscher (Bukarest Fleisch), Urban Explorer offers a cruel lesson in the ugliest aspects of Germany's recent history.

  A warren of tunnels beneath Berlin holds trouble for a group of thrill-seekers.
• 
  Asshole (2010)

  Review preview for Asshole

  A film that represents a transgressive broadside against every value held dear in Bollywood.

  A young, Bengali, wannabe rapper slides into drugs and porn to escape reality and discover his dream.
• 
  A Lonely Place To Die (2011)

  Review preview for A Lonely Place To Die

  This is high-end cinema, let down only by the lack of any obvious subtext to earth all its on-the-edge thrills.

  Mountain climbers become caught up in a game of cat and mouse after discovering a kidnapped girl buried in the wilderness.
• 
  The Holding (2011)

  Review preview for The Holding

  Jacobson is definitely a new British talent to watch.

  An enigmatic stranger may not be as much of a godsend as he first appears to a lonely mum and her daughters.
• 
  Scream 4 (2011)

  Review preview for Scream 4

  Put simply, this supposedly new direction for the franchise will very soon grow old, as a franchise once famed for its innovations is reduced to becoming a deeply conservative product.

  When the survivor of the previous films returns to her home town, the killer reappears.
• 
  Birdemic: Shock And Terror (2010)

  Review preview for Birdemic: Shock And Terror

  So dull, incompetent and ridiculous that it can and will be championed only by a repeat audience of ironists and iconoclasts looking for the next cult film to worship.

  Ornithological apocalypse.
• 
  World Of The Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2 (2011)

  Review preview for World Of The Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2

  Its greatest crime is its utter lack of distinction.

  The military take on the zombie hordes.
• 
  Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011)

  Review preview for Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

  In short, this is a great summer movie, spectacular in its realisation, yet resonant in its themes.

  Man's experimentation on apes sparks a war for supremacy.
• 
  Robot Chicken Star Wars Episode III (2010)

  Review preview for Robot Chicken Star Wars Episode III

  Severe editing might have been a better solution for this hit-and-miss affair.

  Spoof take on Return Of The Jedi.
• 
  Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (2011)

  Review preview for Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

  The comedy is not funny, the action is exhausting, and by the time its 156 minutes are over, you too will have been transformed into a dead-eyed machine that has lost the power or will to care.

  The Decepticons and Autobots battle once again.
• 
  Sweatshop (2009)

  Review preview for Sweatshop

  Put simply, for all the modesty of its budget, Sweatshop delivers high-impact gore by the bucket load.

  A group of young rave organisers find themselves stalked by a silent slasher.
• 
  Red Canyon (2008)

  Review preview for Red Canyon

  Rodriguez weaves an incestuous blurring of genres – now amnesiac psychodrama, now desert gothic, now grotesque slash-n-dash, now perverted tragedy - that is genuinely disorienting.

  Trouble brews in redneck Utah for a pair of siblings trying to come to terms with a horrifying attack.
• 
  Alice (1988)

  Review preview for Alice

  Alice certainly is a triumph of the creative imagination, reordering both Lewis Carroll's original text and the drabness of the material world into a disturbing wonderland of textures and tactility .

  Surreal adventure 'inspired by' the Lewis Carroll classic.
• 
  Yakuza Weapon (2011)

  Review preview for Yakuza Weapon

  If the film's ambition far outpaces its budget, that only makes it resemble its hero, who is funny precisely for being dumb, hyperviolent, and far too big for his boots.

  Working as a mercenary in South America, Shozo Iwaki cis informed of the death of his gang boss dad... and discovers his No. 1 henchman is involved in a double-cross.
• 
  South Solitary (2010)

  Review preview for South Solitary

  Anna Howard's cinematography is never anything less than stunning in its starkness.

  A spinster battles loneliness after she is sent to look after a lighthouse on a remote island.
• 
  Jucy (2010)

  Review preview for Jucy

  Jucy may at times take on the ramshackle amateurishness of the play in which Jackie and Lucy appear – but it more than makes up for this with an enthusiasm and vibrancy that ensures its judiciously brief duration breezes by.

  Jucy = Jackie + Lucy, best friends who hatch a plan to snag the man and grab a cool new job.
• 
  Zombie Undead (2010)

  Review preview for Zombie Undead

  Being low budget and British is no excuse for dire unoriginality.

  A dirty bomb causes a zombie outbreak.
• 
  The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

  Review preview for The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adèle Blanc-Sec

  While there is absurdity aplenty on display here, the film also requires a very high tolerance for the broadest of humour and the slightest of whimsy.

  When a pterodactyl attacks Paris, an intrepid young journalist rises to the challenge.
• 
  Ink (2009)

  Review preview for Ink

  Winans is at his best in the visual realm, and the early sections of his film, in which supernatural entities are seen wordlessly working their nightshifts, prove highly effective examples of narrative economy.

  A father and daughter finds themselves caught up in a battle for human souls by the keepers of dreams and nightmares.
• 
  Rio (2011)

  Review preview for Rio

  Once Rio has settled into its status as a romantic chase caper, the breakneck momentum comes ready-fitted.

  A rare macaw leaves the comforts of his cage in small town Minnesota for the exotic wonders of Rio de Janeiro... meeting a bunch of feathered friends on the way.
• 
  Desearía (2010)

  Review preview for Desearía

  It channels a universally familiar kind of grief and yearning with which any viewer will easily be able to identify.

  A woman contemplates her grief.
• 
  Songs From The Second Floor (2000)

  Review preview for Songs From The Second Floor

  Andersson's film offers a dystopian vision of the new millennium, where misery, pain, guilt and despair are the universal condition, where escape is impossible, and where, no matter how much anyone tries to turn their back on the past, somehow it always r

  Wry examination of the human condition told through a series of vignettes.
• 
  A Swedish Love Story (1970)

  Review preview for A Swedish Love Story

  It is as sweet and tender, not to mention as well-observed, a portrayal of young love as you are likely to find the other side of a John Hughes movie.

  Two youngsters fall in love.
• 
  Source Code (2011)

  Review preview for Source Code

  Ben Ripley's script is far less interested in the technical aspects of its own apparatus than in the human condition itself – our desperate search for big answers and satisfying closure, and the mortality that both delimits and perhaps ennobles this very

  A man discovers he's part of an experiment that lets him inhabit another man's body for the last eight minutes of the man's life - his task is to stop a terror attack.
• 
  Sharktopus (2010)

  Review preview for Sharktopus

  It will not win any awards for its hammy acting or merely adequate effects, but again, these shortcomings seem an integral part of the overall desired effect.

  A hybrid monster menaces Mexico.
• 
  The Hedgehog (2009)

  Review preview for The Hedgehog

  Achache overexplains the odd reference to Tolstoy and strips away almost entirely her source's more philosophical content.

  A precocious 11-year-old decides to kill herself on her 12th birthday.
• 
  Skyline (2010)

  Review preview for Skyline

  The entire invasion might even be read as a vivid anxiety dream about the alienating impact of birth and parenthood.

  Strange lights appear over Los Angeles and the people who walk into them disappear.
• 
  True Grit (2010)

  Review preview for True Grit

  Where Roberts' screenplay opted at times for easy sentiment the Coens' writing is not only wittier but also as chilly as a late Oklahoma autumn.

  A young girl seeks out a lawman to hunt down the killer of her father.
• 
  Brotherhood (2010)

  Review preview for Brotherhood

  Canon never pauses for breath or allows even a moment for reflection, editing his scenes with a rapid-fire staccato.

  A frat house hazing goes badly awry.
• 
  How I Ended This Summer (2010)

  Review preview for How I Ended This Summer

  A work of chilling beauty, whose sparse, unforgiving landscapes can accommodate all manner of allegorical readings.

  A youngster on a remote Arctic research station engages in a series of deadly deceptions.
• 
  I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

  Review preview for I Spit On Your Grave

  Zarchi finds a way to position his characters and viewers alike as both aggressors and victims. The results are neither comfortable nor pretty, but they are certainly confronting.

  A woman seeks revenge after she is brutally gang-raped.
• 
  Koktebel (2003)

  Review preview for Koktebel

  The father and son are not so much returning home as trying to build a new one on the foundations of Russia's history, in a terra incognita where values, and even names, have changed.

  A father and son's relationship is explored on a road trip.
• 
  Family Guy: It's A Trap (2010)

  Review preview for Family Guy: It's A Trap

  It's A Trap! is unquestionably Family Guy's best-looking Star Wars special (and the first to be made in widescreen), but... there are just too many lazy jokes.

  Last in the trilogy of the animation's Star Wars specials.
• 
  TRON: Legacy (2010)

  Review preview for TRON: Legacy

  You are unlikely to see a better-looking film this year or a film that is more of its moment – but if you see this a few years hence, it will no doubt already have started looking as redundant as an Eighties arcade game.

  Seven years after his mysterious disappearance, Kevin Flynn's son discovers his father is trapped in his own 'utopia'.
• 
  Thomas Mao (2010)

  Review preview for Thomas Mao

  A true original, collapsing and cross-fertilising all manner of shifting ideologies in the best unlikely pairing since Laurel and Hardy.

  When a Westerner comes to stay in the guest room of a shepherd's house, an unlikely friendship develops.
• 
  Cold Water Of The Sea (2010)

  Review preview for Cold Water Of The Sea

  This understated moodpiece is a real treat for those in tune with Lucrecia Martel's brand of nuanced suggestiveness - and is full of pretty pictures for everyone else.

  A couple on a trip to the beach have an unexpected encounter with a runaway child.
• 
  Skirt Day (2008)

  Review preview for Skirt Day

  A stark political satire, exposing all the divisions and frictions – social, sexual, racial, cultural and religious – of a modern multi-cultural France.

  A teacher accidentally takes her class hostage.
• 
  Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide (2010)

  Review preview for Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide

  A painstakingly curated trailer reel that pays affectionate if sometimes wry tribute to a bygone chapter in the history of genre cinema.

  Collection of trailers to films that fell foul of censorship laws, along with documentary Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship And Videotape.
• 
  We Are What We Are (2010)

  Review preview for We Are What We Are

  We Are What We Are deploys some well-defined horror tropes to dramatise much broader humanistic concerns about survival, continuity and love.

  A sinister family face tough times after their "breadwinner" dies.
• 
  The Kids Are All Right (2010)

  Review preview for The Kids Are All Right

  A whip-smart, often very funny family drama, presenting observations on domestic life that are all too uncomfortably recognisable.

  The children of a lesbian couple hunt down their biological dad with comic results.
• 
  Treacle Jr (2010)

  Review preview for Treacle Jr

  The contrasts in education, class and outlook between likable buffoon Aidan and his 'straight man' Tom, though certainly funny, also come with an underlying pathos, as both men struggle to find their place in the world

  Homeless after walking out on his family, a confused man finds himself dependent on an unusual couple.
• 
  End Of Animal (2010)

  Review preview for End Of Animal

  There is no other film in the apocalypse subgenre that quite matches its low-key approach to the unravelling of the human species.

  A young woman seeks the help of a mysterious stranger after the sudden failure of all electricity leaves her stranded in an instantly dog eat dog world.