★★★★☆ Adapted from Colin Niel’s 2017 novel Seules les bêtes, German director Dominik Moll’s Only the Animals is a grippingly-realised mystery-thriller. Centring around the apparent murder of Evelyne Ducat (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and the five people connected by her death, Moll spins a yarn of deceit, ferocious attachment and guilt. Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Set in the titular southern Thai town, the futuristic-sounding date of Krabi, 2562 actually refer to the contemporaneous year in the Buddhist calendar. In filmmakers Ben Rivers and Anocha Suwichakornpong’s first collaboration, Krabi, 2562’s title is the first of many nods to time as something subjective, and where futures, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Long before the era of breaking news and 24-hour rolling coverage, when Fox was just a twinkle in Rupert Murdoch’s eye and CNN had yet to unscroll its first Chiron, son of Russian Jewish immigrants Mike Wallace dominated the airwaves and the ratings. Going behind the headlines and losing Continue Reading
Basements are a staple in horror movies. They’re a great way to signal to the audience that something creepy is about to happen, and they’ve been used to incredible effect in horror movies since the beginning. If you’re looking for a great horror movie to watch, here are ten highly-rated Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Slipping under the radar at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, The County was nevertheless a hit with those who sought it out. Released on Curzon Home Cinema this week, this western-tinged, visceral Icelandic drama deserves as large an audience as possible. Despite the obvious Icelandic setting of Grímur Hákonarson’s (Rams) third Continue Reading
★★★★☆ In his follow-up to The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Mark Cousins takes us on a “new road movie through cinema”, a 14-hour virtual film school made up entirely of the all-too-often forgotten links: masterful films directed by women. Please note that this is a review of the complete Continue Reading
One of the greatest things about poker is the drama of the game itself. Just imagine the thrill professional players feel while they play, knowing that a single card could change their lives forever. Knowing how popular poker is and what a huge public it appeals to, many Hollywood directors Continue Reading
★★★★☆ In the years since Juno offered a light-hearted but even-handed take on the subject of unwanted teen pregnancy, the discourse around reproductive rights in America has, if anything, grown more polarised. Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a subtle, quietly devastating look at how a young woman’s body Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu’s seventh feature (and second out this month in the UK, the other being documentary Infinite Football), is a stylish and fitfully engaging crime thriller with a great concept, let down by incoherent plotting and impenetrable characterisation. Cristi (Vlad Ivanov), a middle-aged cop working for the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ A Romanian pen pusher’s attempts to revolutionise the beautiful game goes far beyond inverting the pyramid in Corneliu Porumboiu’s hilarious Infinite Football, a semi-follow-up to The Second Game. The introduction of rules to the game of football gave it a shared language and helped turn it into a spectator Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ In her directorial debut Romantic Comedy, British musician and actor Elizabeth Sankey examines the history of one of cinema’s greatest and most enduring genres. Sadly, a love of romantic comedies and a sharp approach to editing are not enough to buoy up this hopelessly shallow documentary. Opening on a Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Camino Skies tracks six pilgrims from New Zealand and Australia as they embark on the historic five hundred mile pilgrimage that winds across Spain to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The gruelling pilgrimage – known in English as the Way of St. James – across the Continue Reading
★★★★★ When Pablo Larraín took the helm of Jackie, it was the first time the Chilean director had attempted two things: a story set outside of Latin America and one with a female protagonist. With Ema, Larraín is back in his home country, weaving a tightly-controlled narrative of family and Continue Reading
★★★★☆ At an age when, for most, a trip to the bathroom would count as the most strenuous task of the day, ex-pat champion of authentic Mexican cuisine Diana Kennedy is still excitedly on the hunt for that most elusive and unforgettable of tamales recipes. Something of a national treasure Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Australian director Kitty Green’s fourth feature may be her first fiction film – after documentaries Casting JonBenet, Ukraine is Not A Brothel and The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul – but it is undoubtedly rooted in reality. Quietly raging, The Assistant is a bleakly precise study of complicity in workplace abuse. Movie producer Continue Reading
