DVD Review: ‘The Rise’
★★☆☆☆ The rollicking heist movie is one of those genres that can easily feel redundant nowadays. With elaborate plot machinations its central tenet, this...
★★★☆☆ Set 45,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens were making incursions into the lands of the Neanderthals, Andrew Cumming’s horror thriller The Origin depicts a small tribe coming up against a malefic entity in unknown and inhospitable environs.
Returning for its 26th edition and with 2021’s Covid restrictions largely a thing of the past, Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) this year crowned Hilmar Oddsson’s Icelandic dark comedy Driving Mum as the 2022 Grand Prix winner, with the Best Director award going to Ahmad Bahrami for thriller The Wastetown.
The head of this year’s Venice jury Julianne Moore awarded the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, to Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, her profile of artist Nan Goldin and her campaign against the Sackler family. It’s a brilliant, committed piece of activist cinema.
★★★☆☆ Celebrated British director Joanna Hogg is back on the Venice Lido with The Eternal Daughter, a film shot in secret in lockdown and starring The Souvenir’s Tilda Swinton in dual roles as a mother and daughter heading to a hotel in the countryside for a much-needed birthday vacation.
★★★☆☆ A man sits alone in a room with a notepad and begins to scribble down his own voiceover. He only writes on one page and seems to always be starting at the top. His thoughts will be meticulous and he will show a certain expertise. When he’s finished writing he will place the pen on the table, neatly aligned with the pad.
The Sarajevo Film Festival has a history of resilience, so it was hardly surprising to see it come back stronger than ever after two years of Covid restrictions. Founded in 1995, the festival is now the leading industry event in south-east Europe, showcasing the very best films from across the Balkan peninsula.
★★☆☆☆ The rollicking heist movie is one of those genres that can easily feel redundant nowadays. With elaborate plot machinations its central tenet, this...
★★★★☆ It’s the year 2163, and the spaceship Ikarie XB-1 is off to explore life on the ‘white planet’ orbiting the Alpha Centauri. Like...
★★☆☆☆ Council estates are gradually replacing graveyards as the setting of choice for contemporary horrors, whilst hooded teenagers are now the zombies of the...
★★★☆☆ Richard Kuklinski was an infamous contract killer doing the dirty work of various New York crime organisations throughout the sixties and seventies. Estimates...
★★★★☆ Having seemingly taken on board the various criticisms levelled at season two for its lack of action and, at times, pedestrian pacing, AMC’s...
★★★☆☆ Coming-of-age yarns are a dime a dozen and it takes an awful lot to make one stand out from the crowd. Jordan Vogt-Roberts...
★★☆☆☆ Roman Coppola, the oldest heir to the family filmmaking dynasty, ventures back into the directing chair, following his debut from over a decade...
★★☆☆☆ Jean-Luc Godard once remarked that “all you need for a movie is a gun and a girl”, and the director of this tired...
★★☆☆☆ An obnoxious, Michael Moore-aping battle cry against big industry and its ties to climate change denial, Craig Scott Rosebraugh’s subtly titled Greedy Lying...
★★★☆☆ A swift glance at the UK poster for Brad Furman thriller Runner Runner (2013) – with its triumvirate of ridiculously good-looking stars, air-brushed...