★★★★☆ A chamber piece constructed in pallid pastel shades, Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth (2015) marks a tonal if not thematic departure from the precocious misanthropy of last year’s well-received Listen Up Philip (2014). A feminist exploration of jealously […]
★★☆☆☆ Revered Bavarian director Werner Herzog strains to marry his eccentric directorial style with the period epic in this rather stolid and strangely formal romance starring Australian actress Nicole Kidman as British explorer-cum-spy Gertrude Bell. Queen of the Desert (2015), […]
★★★★☆ Arriving at the Berlinale with another probing examination into Chile’s harrowing past, The Pearl Button (2015) makes for a fitting diptych to Patricio Guzmán’s previous documentary, Nostalgia for the Light (2012). Whilst the focus may have shifted, Guzmán continues […]
★★★★☆ A festering beauty of a film slowly reveals itself in this bleak but uplifting black-and-white study of grief from Quebeçois director François Delisle, an acutely aware portrait of a relationship after the unimaginable. Fresh from Sundance – where it […]
★★★★☆ Last year’s Stranger by the Lake (also distributed by Peccadillo Pictures) marked something of a sea change in the transitioning of LGBT cinema into mainstream acceptability. Like that film, this lovely coming of age feature, The Way he Looks […]
★★★☆☆ The feature debut of the most recent member of the Coppola clan to pick up a film camera, Gia (granddaughter of Francis), is also an entry to the evergreen staple of American cinema: the teen movie. Coppola acknowledges the […]
★★★☆☆ Another year, another Young Adult book series optioned and adapted to spin into a trilogy (or more!) of action-packed and spectacular films. Based on James Dashner’s novels, Wes Ball’s The Maze Runner (2014) depicts the nightmarish dystopia of a […]
★★★★☆ Tragedy says “We all die”, whilst comedy says “Ah, but life goes on”. The winner of last year’s Golden Lion, Roy Andersson’s first feature film in seven years – the brilliantly titled existential comedy A Pigeon Sat on a Branch […]
