★★★★☆ Documentary-making machine Alex Gibney (here joined by co-directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger) returns with a timely – perhaps too timely – postmortem on the American response to the Coronavirus pandemic, Totally Under Control. Right from the start, Gibney draws attention to the difficulty of making a documentary during Continue Reading
★★★★☆ François Ozon returns to screens with Summer of ’85, based on Aidan Chambers’ novel Dance on My Grave. A sumptuously shot, nostalgic bildungsroman framed by a bitttersweet darkness, the film deploys many well-worn tropes of the coming of age drama. But they’re executed with such a light, self-aware confidence Continue Reading
★★★★☆ “How much do you get paid, just to wear these shoes?” David Letterman’s question to Michael Jordan is met with shrieks of delight from his studio audience. The soon-to-be global superstar bashfully responds, “A lot,” grinning from ear to ear. It’s 1986, Ronald Reagan is President and capitalism is alive Continue Reading
★★★★☆ A revelation on a bike ride in France leads to a rift between two childhood friends, but through thick and thin, uphill and downhill, friendship proves surprisingly and hearteningly durable in Michael Angelo Covino’s The Climb. Kyle (Kyle Marvin) and Mike (Michael Covino) are BFFs on holiday in France Continue Reading
★★★★☆ A major contributor to the reverential narrative of wistful cinema, Giuseppe Tornatore’s magnum opus Cinema Paradiso is an elegant distillation of the form’s escapist qualities and the garland of an industry that understands global audiences’ enduring appetite for wild nostalgia. Returning to his lavish Rome apartment, revered film director Continue Reading
It’s often been said that birds of a feather, flock together. That might not always be true when it comes to business but the entertainment industry worldwide is an exception to the status quo. Cinema, mostly made in Hollywood with amazing exotic settings, is the one special art form that Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ “Last year at this time we had snow, and now it’s nice.” An earth-shattering, potentially life-altering sea change occurs behind closed doors for two women living under the constraints of Victorian conservatism in Francis Lee‘s Ammonite. Encompassing the cold, muted tone of the entire script – and indeed the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Lovers Rock is loud, proud and joyous. It’s an invigorating, pound-the-walls-and-floorboards ode to its titular style of reggae. At just sixty-eight minutes, the second instalment of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe five-parter may seem more episodic in length, but as the series’ name suggests, great things can come in small Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ In 2018, a quiet 15 year-old girl from Sweden began protesting the climate crisis by striking from school. Amidst global disquiet and political inertia, Greta Thunberg rapidly became the face of contemporary climate activism. In his directorial debut, Nathan Grossman charts her rise in this perfectly enjoyable but ultimately Continue Reading
★★★★★ Adapted from Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, Nomadland is writer and director Chloé Zhao’s third feature-length film and is a beautiful and compassionate portrait of people living on the outskirts of American society. In 2011, after the economy collapsed, it leaves the rural Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Deadpan, absurdist comedy may not seem like an obvious genre choice for a story about the cruel, grinding bureaucracy of the UK’s asylum process. But five years since the playful oddness of his debut feature, Pikadero, Ben Sharrock returns in style with Limbo. The Scottish director again demonstrates a Continue Reading
★★★★☆ “You’d never know what’s underneath, unless someone told you.” History books, lectures and internet searches cannot possibly substitute hearing first-hand the effects of Europe’s colonialist past on one of the most impoverished countries in the world. In Rob Lemkin’s African Apocalypse, Oxford University student Femi Nylander’s voyage of discovery Continue Reading
★★★★☆ This year’s surfeit of films about cults hits its stride with Malgorzata Szumowska’s first English-language picture. A visceral, Atwoodian journey, The Other Lamb is as much an examination of narcissism and the existing structures of gendered power as it is of the limits of faith. Living a philistine existence and Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla is among the most influential horror stories ever written. Director Emily Harris’ de-fanged adaptation follows plenty of other versions of the novella, zeroing in on the ‘lesbian vampire’ aspect, but the result is deathly dull. Teenager Lara (Hannah Rae) is isolated and lonely. Living with Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Charting the production of Roy Andersson’s latest and possibly final film, About Endlessness, documentarian Fred Scott explores in his first feature the career of one of Sweden’s most beloved and singular filmmakers. The result is an affectionate and often enchanting tribute that is as in thrall to the affable Continue Reading