★★★☆☆ 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.
★★☆☆☆ Bereavement, mental health, the threadbare US social welfare system and homelessness are the heavy topics that British-born director Deborah Richards tackles in her debut feature. Unfortunately, their worthy but superficial and somewhat incoherent presentation means that Move Me No Mountain is an emotionally and thematically inert experience.
★★★☆☆ Sometimes, it’s tough being really skilled at one thing in particular. Having flown out the blocks with two supremely good, bonafide hit horror films (Hereditary, Midsommar), writer and director Ari Aster had to make a departure to avoid being pigeon-holed as a genre specialist.
★★★☆☆ In 1994, the late Antonia Bird paired up Linus Roach and Robert Carlisle for Priest (1994), the tale of a Catholic priest torn between the church and his homosexuality. Now, another female director, Malgorzata Szumowska tackles the same subject...
★★★☆☆ There’s something about the films foraged from the extensive BFI archives which makes the viewer hanker after a Britain which no longer exists. Their latest volume, The Driving Force, featuring various British Transport Films from the 1950s through to...
★★★★★ At a pivotal point in Francis Ford Coppola’s masterful crime drama The Godfather: Part II (1974), Mafia kingpin Michael Corleone states, “If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it’s that you can kill...
★★★★☆ An unnerving examination of promiscuity and infatuation, Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake (2013) combines the ethnography of gay cinema with an exhilarating mix of auteurist sadism and nail-biting suspense to craft a truly mesmerising erotic noir. Franck (Pierre...
★★☆☆☆ There’s something altogether uneasy about the depiction of war in Fedor Bondarchuk’s Stalingrad (2013). It’s nothing to do with the flag-waving patriotism nor any kind of moral quandary, but instead the Russian blockbuster’s slick, stereoscopic visuals. A sea of...
★★★★☆ Those cinemagoers concerned that the teenage adventures of Bella and Edward might have had a lasting negative impact on the movie vampire can rest easy. Last year, Neil Jordan’s Byzantium (2013) showed more than just intent to thoughtfully engage...
★★★★☆ Lars von Trier returns to UK cinemas this week with Nymphomaniac (2013), shortened and split into two volumes from a five-hour original cut. This dissection is unlikely to be the only divisive aspect of the self-styled auteur’s latest, a...
★★★☆☆ The masterstroke of Nicholas D. Wrathall’s documentary Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013) is the substantial presence of the man himself. It would, undoubtedly, still make for interesting material even in his absence – he has spent...
★★★★☆ “The old will die and the young will forget. We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters”. The lethal words of statesman David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, who expunged generations of...
★☆☆☆☆ Burdened by a plot as saccharine as a Nicholas Sparks novel unceremoniously mashed with all the very worst clichés of teen movie fantasy (looking at you Mortal Instruments), Akiva Goldsman offers his tiresome and bizarre time travel romance A...
★★★★★ Jacques Demy’s poignant tale of doomed romanticism, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), is rereleased on Blu-ray this month through StudioCanal. Bold and incredibly vibrant, Demy’s reinvention of the movie musical arrived just as the genre was on the wane...
★☆☆☆☆ The somewhat mixed response to Robert Rodriguez’s 2010 spoof trailer turned feature, Machete, was an indication that audiences were tiring of seeing him draw from his overused bag of visual tricks to deliver yet another cartoonish, Latino-flavoured actioner. His...