Film Review: ‘Letters to Max’
★★★☆☆ How to solve a problem like Abkhazia? Or rather, how to send a letter from Paris to a country that has not yet been acknowledged by the French state? Documentary filmmaker Eric Baudelaire again chooses […]
Film Review: ‘Fidelio: Alice’s Journey’
★★★☆☆ The ironic naming of the cargo ship that director Lucie Borleteau uses in Fidelio: Alice’s Journey (2014) comes into view as the ‘Fidelio’ departs the port of Marseille for the first time. Employed as the […]
Film Review: ‘By Our Selves’
★★☆☆☆ “John Clare was a minor nature poet, who went mad,” voices repeat as a challenging refrain throughout Andrew Kötting’s By Our Selves (2015), a barmy reconstruction of a four-day walk/escapade that Clare took from the […]
Interview: Andrew Bujalski, ‘Results’
Though he dislikes the term himself, Andrew Bujalski is widely regarded as the linchpin of the nebulous mumblecore scene that spawned the likes of the Duplass brothers, Joe Swanberg and Lynn Shelton. Whilst his first three […]
DVD Review: ‘Spooks’
★★☆☆☆ In a grey, rainy London, hued blue to add further sombre foreboding, the indomitable Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) finds himself in a familiar position: watching an op go south via screens in a new and […]
DVD Review: ‘P’tit Quinquin’
★★★★☆ French filmmaker Bruno Dumont is a director strongly associated with serious, spiritual, and metaphysical European arthouse. What a surprise it was, then, when his latest project was announced as not only being a first foray […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Otto Preminger Noir Collection’
★★★★★ Alongside Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, and John Huston, Otto Preminger was one of the most influential film noir directors in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. This new collection by the BFI gives us three […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Night and the City’
★★★★★ Adapted from Gerald Kersh’s 1938 novel, which at the time warned readers that it featured a story “not for the strait-laced or squeamish, but for those willing to taste it, a treat of rare substance”, […]
DVD Review: ‘Leave to Remain’
★★★★☆ Bruce Goodison’s impressive feature Leave to Remain (2013) confronts the issue of teenage asylum seekers struggling to adapt to life in London and dealing with past trauma as they wait for their permanent leave to […]
DVD Review: ‘Anarchy’
★★☆☆☆ Belonging to that wonky sub-genre of William Shakespeare’s commonly works known as the ‘problem plays’, Michael Almereyda’s Anarchy (2014) is an intriguingly off-the-wall production which ultimately doesn’t quite gel. Cymbeline (Ed Harris) of the Briton […]
DVD Review: ’52 Tuesdays’
★★★☆☆ The writer and director of 52 Tuesdays (2013), Sophie Hyde, must be commended for her sticking to the challenging rules that she set herself. The film was shot strictly on every Tuesday for a year, […]
Film Review: ‘The Reflektor Tapes’
★★☆☆☆ “Insofar as I have any ambition for our music, it would be that it survives anonymously,” a band member with scant irony states at the beginning of Arcade Fire: The Reflektor Tapes (2015), begging the […]