★★★☆☆ 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 2011, first-time director William Eubank constructed a replica of the International Space Station in a driveway, out of odds-and-ends, and within it staged a flawed but ambitious science fiction saga called Love. For his next trick, he has...
★★☆☆☆ Fantasy epic Seventh Son (2014) had potential to be a somewhat unique film in a genre abundant with echoing plot arcs and medieval-like worlds, but the amalgamation of different cinematic influences director Sergey Bodrov used to illustrate his story...
★★☆☆☆ At a point in Jon Wright’s Robot Overlords (2014), Robin Smythe – the film’s human Big Bad played by Ben Kingsley – asks “You know what ‘chav’ stands for? Council house and violent.” It’s delivered in an unsure northern...
★★☆☆☆ This sophomoric culture-clash comedy stars two comedy actors at different points on the career spectrum. Kevin Hart, a stand-up whose barrage of studio comedies have been huge financial successes, shares the screen with Will Ferrell, still a draw despite...
★★★☆☆ Courage and kindness (and perhaps a little magic for good measure) are the cornerstones of Kenneth Branagh’s sweet retelling of Cinderella (2015), a benevolent yet paradoxically cravenness reimagining of Charles Perrault’s classic fairytale. A live-action Disney production starring Cate...
★★★★☆ Arriving on UK screens a year after its Berlin bow, Blind (2014) – the debut feature from Norwegian screenwriter turned director Eskil Vogt – imbues cognitive visualisation and the mechanics of storytelling to achieve what many have tired and...
★★★★☆ After her staggering visual and philosophical odyssey, The Fruit of Paradise (1970), Vera Chytilová found herself serving a lengthy ban from filmmaking in Czechoslovakia. Shackled by the clamp-downs of the Soviet regime, when she did finally return to feature...
★★★★☆ The technicolor mastery of the films of Powell and Pressburger is legendary. It is a hallmark of their oeuvre, a signpost of their significance. Add to that a mastery of technical, dramatic film construction and you find yourself in...
★★★★☆ Dystopias are usually set in a tweaked present rather than a distant future. 1984 is simply 1948, the year of its composition, writ backwards. And so it is with Norman Jewison’s Rollerball (1975), a gloriously entertaining dystopian thriller, set...
★★★★☆ Recently crowned the highest grossing non-Hollywood family film ever made, Paddington (2014) is the little British film adaptation that could; a family-friendly ode to family and friends that defied the odds and shushed the naysayers with aplomb. Admittedly the...
★★☆☆☆ Identical twins are a staple of the horror genre pantry, a corporeal conduit in which to explore the dichotomy between good and evil. Frequently presenting an image of innocence alongside a capricious, often deadly parallel, the audience is forced...
★★★★★ “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” So screams deranged anchorman Howard Beale. However, it’s a different kind of rage which infuses Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976) – a crystalline, precise, witty, world-weary and...