Reviews by Anton Bitel

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Into The Blue (2005)

  Review preview for Into The Blue

  The characters seem as shallow as the waters through which they paddle.

  Underwater treasure evokes a moral dilmma for fit diver.
• 
  Invisible Waves (2006)

  Review preview for Invisible Waves

  On paper, Invisible Waves may sound like just another Asian action policier or revenge thriller, but in reality it is altogether more abstract and elusive than that.

  A man, dogged by guilt, goes on the run after poisoning his lover.
• 
  In Memory Of Me (2007)

  Review preview for In Memory Of Me

  Like the sequestered lives that it portrays, Constanza's film is stripped down to its bare essentials.

  A man tired of his superficial life decides to join the priesthood but finds a web of deceit in the monastery which makes him question his faith.
• 
  I've Loved You So Long (2008)

  Review preview for I've Loved You So Long

  Essentially this is a drama about the solitude of suffering, the curse of blood and the possibility of rebirth, but it masquerades as a thriller.

  Estranged sisters reunite under difficult circumstances.
• 
  I Do (2006)

  Review preview for I Do

  Far from caring much if he will ever get his girl, you just want Luis to act his age and grow some balls.

  A single man hatches a plan for a marriage of convenience and gets more than he bargained for.
• 
  I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006)

  Review preview for I Don't Want to Sleep Alone

  Tsai has erected a somnolent reverie on alienation, desire and restlessness.

  Migrants in Malaysia dream of sleep, recovery, and each other.
• 
  I Know You Know (2008)

  Review preview for I Know You Know

  Sometimes funny, sometimes very tense, and ultimately poignant too.

  A young boy harbours suspicions that his father is a spy.
• 
  Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films (2007)

  Review preview for Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films

  The animator brings to full life precisely what his rulers were endeavouring to keep repressed: the nightmarish, the unconscious, the nonsensical, the abject, the uncanny, the insatiable, the immoderate, the ecstatic.

  Selection of surrealist shorts gets a polished release from the BFI.
• 
  Jarhead (2005)

  Review preview for Jarhead

  It is to the film's great credit that its politics remain subtle.

  Waiting for war, with Albert Camus, in Operation Desert Shield.
• 
  Jigoku (1960)

  Review preview for Jigoku

  Its play with lighting effects, colour gels and jarring camera angles makes everything - both on earth and below - seem an off-kilter nightmare.

  A young student's life spirals into catastrophe after he meets a mysterious young man.
• 
  The Jim Jarmusch Collection: Volume 1 (2008)

  Review preview for The Jim Jarmusch Collection: Volume 1

  Be throughly out-cooled by America's finest hipster.

  Trio of films from the king of dead-pan cinema, featuring Permanent Vacation, Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law.
• 
  The Jim Jarmusch Collection: Volume 2 (2008)

  Review preview for The Jim Jarmusch Collection: Volume 2

  The coolest kid on the indie block has a truly distinctive voice.

  Second volume of films by the coolest of all indie directors. Featuring Mystery Train, Night On Earth and Dead Man.
• 
  Jack Reacher (2012)

  Review preview for Jack Reacher

  Make no mistake: despite the big cast, this is the sort of thriller you can safely snooze through on a plane, connecting with ease the dots between the clichéd fights and chases.

  A former military policeman comes out of self-imposed retirement to investigate a series of sniper shootings.
• 
  The Jodorowsky Collection (2007)

  Review preview for The Jodorowsky Collection

  A comprehensive and immaculately compiled collection.

  Six-disc collection of Jodorowsky's first three features.
• 
  Junkhearts (2011)

  Review preview for Junkhearts

  It is a striking audiovisual style which rescues this production from many of the more hackneyed tropes of British social realism and urban grit.

  An unlikely group of people are drawn together by shared loneliness.
• 
  Just 6.5 (2019)

  Review preview for Just 6.5

  All its genre elements are the neat packaging for some grim state-of-the-nation commentary, showing an aspect of Iranian society that is seldom explored on film.

  Action film sees a young cop take on a drug lord.
• 
  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.
• 
  Just One Drink (2015)

  Review preview for Just One Drink

  As all the thematic strands of the film's first half are brought violently together in a symmetrical set of revenge stories, the viewer is left to pass divine judgment as to who is in the right, and who is in the wrong.

  When a man receives a party invitation from a woman he doesn't remember meeting, vengeance is on the cards.
• 
  Kamui: The Lone Ninja (2009)

  Review preview for Kamui: The Lone Ninja

  Amid horrific iniquities and inequalities, the film asks, is true freedom ever possible for anyone but the privileged?

  Ninja-tastic adaptation of the famous manga.
• 
  The Karate Kid (2010)

  Review preview for The Karate Kid

  Give it time, and this remake, too, will seem dated, but its coming-of-age story has a timeless appeal.

  After moving a to China, a bullied boy discovers a new approach to life as he learns kung fu.
• 
  Kicks (2009)

  Review preview for Kicks

  As a study of the mirage of celebrity and the emptiness of fanaticism, Kicks is frank, insightful and hard-hitting.

  When a footy star announces a transfer abroad two female fans aim to change his mind... no matter what.
• 
  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.
• 
  Kings And Queen (2004)

  Review preview for Kings And Queen

  Despite its considerable length, it avoids overstaying its welcome.

  The complex examination of madness, love, psychological growth and unresolved feelings within relationships.
• 
  King Kong (2005)

  Review preview for King Kong

  In Kong, Jackson's technical crew has created a beast that is at once terrifying, magisterial, sympathetic and thoroughly believable.

  Peter Jackson revisits his favourite film in a great remake.
• 
  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.
• 
  Knowing (2009)

  Review preview for Knowing

  What at first seems a simple premise with a dumb-assed popcorn resolution might well unravel in your head into something altogether more resonant and perplexing (or not).

  A boy finds a time capsule containing deadly predictions, leaving his professor father in a race to avert disaster.
• 
  Kokoro (1955)

  Review preview for Kokoro

  Exquisitely crafted.

  A pessimistic film exploring one man’s self-imposed isolation.
• 
  Kotoko (2011)

  Review preview for Kotoko

  This is a difficult film, full of abhorrent behaviours and unbearable tensions – but at the same time it shows a profound respect towards its troubled subject, and therefore towards its viewers as well.

  A single mother clings to life amid nightmarish mental problems and self-mutilation.
• 
  Lars And The Real Girl (2007)

  Review preview for Lars And The Real Girl

  Every performance in it is perfect.

  A quiet young man falls in love with a woman who is perfect in every way - except that she's inflatable.
• 
  Late At Night: Voices Of Ordinary Madness (2013)

  Review preview for Late At Night: Voices Of Ordinary Madness

  Built upon a variety of different perspectives, Guo's politically engaged sort-of documentary is more an episodic tapestry of suggestions than anything like a coherent argument.

  A portrait of the frenetic East End of London.
• 
  Lazy Days (2007)

  Review preview for Lazy Days

  The humour, while liberally spread, is always tempered with more sombre notes.

  A group of thirtysomething slackers come of age.
• 
  The Legend Of Zorro (2005)

  Review preview for The Legend Of Zorro

  The occasional jokes are only occasionally funny and the seen-it-all-before kiddy subplot succeeds only in underlining the film's confusion over its target demographic.

  Sword-fighting sequel, sees Zorro take on a racist preacher.
• 
  Lesbian Psycho (2002)

  Review preview for Lesbian Psycho

  A nightmare in a damaged brain, using an imagination no more, nor less, disturbed than our own.

  Camping for girls ends in slashfest.
• 
  Living On Love Alone (2010)

  Review preview for Living On Love Alone

  The film's action ultimately moves to a borderland between not just France and Spain, but also crime thriller and love story, dreams and reality.

  A relationship with a daring young actor offers a young woman escape from the tedium of her nine to five job.
• 
  Lady Vengeance (2005)

  Review preview for Lady Vengeance

  Beautiful, riveting, intelligent and surprisingly responsible.

  Revenge is ugly and intricately planned in South Korea. Now out to own as part of the Vengeance Trilogy box set.
• 
  Lemming (2005)

  Review preview for Lemming

  Moll can hold his own, offering in Lemming a death-defying leap into the angst-ridden psyches of the modern couple.

  A French angle, with David Lynch references, to the surreal underbelly of bourgeois marriages.
• 
  Let Me In (2010)

  Review preview for Let Me In

  It has nearly everything that filmgoers loved about Alfredson's Swedish original – except the originality.

  A lonely boy meets a strange girl with a dark secret.
• 
  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.
• 
  The Lives Of Others (2006)

  Review preview for The Lives Of Others

  Its authenticity and fidelity to the time in which it is set are beyond doubt.

  East German secret police spy on a playwright and follow the course of his life over a number of years.
• 
  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.
• 
  Looted (2019)

  Review preview for Looted

  Looted is all at once a localised crime drama, a tale of a difficult yet loving father-son relationship, an exploration of escapism's price, and a social realist anatomisation of a community.

  Rob spends his days stealing cars with his gang in a town on the English coast... but at night he returns home to his terminally ill dad.
• 
  Lynch (one) (2007)

  Review preview for Lynch (one)

  Displays an artistry all of its own, quite unlike the thrown-together 'qualities' of your typical behind-the-scenes extra.

  An insight into the working life of cult film director David Lynch.
• 
  Long Weekend (1978)

  Review preview for Long Weekend

  A creepy one-off.

  Getting back to nature for a sophisticated Sydney couple upsets the animals.
• 
  Long Weekend (2008)

  Review preview for Long Weekend

  Without question an eerie and ambiguous piece.

  Remake of the cult horror that sees nature turn predator.
• 
  Lord Of War (2005)

  Review preview for Lord Of War

  Cage finds the perfect balance between Yuri's winning salesmanship and latent self-loathing in a crucial but demanding role.

  The cynical dark world of an unscrupulous arms dealer.
• 
  The Loved Ones (2009)

  Review preview for The Loved Ones

  A joyous genre mash-up of John Hughes-style adolescent anxieties and drill-bit depravities (call it 'torture prom'), all married in McLeavy's wonderfully unhinged turn as a pretty-in-pink princess of perversion.

  The father of teenager Lola will go to any lengths to get her the boy of her dreams... including kidnap and torture. Plus read our exclusive interview with Robin McLeavy.
• 
  Love The Beast (2009)

  Review preview for Love The Beast

  Non-car people will find themselves forced into the position of disengaged anthropologist, observing all the vehicular bump and grind without gaining any real insight or emotional connection from the experience.

  Eric Bana's debut documentary traces his love affair with his Ford XB Falcon Coupe.
• 
  Lunacy (2005)

  Review preview for Lunacy

  Svankmajer makes the whole world a madhouse and all humanity its patients.

  Horror film addresses madness, both in and out of the asylum.
• 
  Malevolence (2005)

  Review preview for Malevolence

  Blatantly retraces killing grounds so old and familiar that at times it seems little more than a fan boy's compendium of favourite moments from the last half century's worth of slash-and-dash mayhem.

  Bank robbers, with hostages in tow, hide out beside a spooky slaughterhouse.
• 
  Mammuth (2010)

  Review preview for Mammuth

  Anchored by Depardieu's unflinching performance and his sheer physicality, the film mixes melancholic nostalgia and mordant satire with a strong sense of the absurd.

  An anarchic comedy in which a retired abbatoir worker takes to the road on his Mammuth motorbike in search of the paperwork he needs to get his pension.