★★★☆☆ 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.
★★☆☆☆ Untangling the web of politics, sex, drugs and power that weave together crime families is a massive undertaking within film. Much like political dramas, we’ve been met with a myriad of crime family-related films over the years that try...
★★★★☆ Can memories be trusted to document the past? Visual artist Omar Fast’s ambitious debut Remainder, an adaptation of Tom McCarthy’s eponymous novel questions the limitations of art as a tool to interpret history. Combining the devious logic of its...
★★★★☆ Although Lorene Scafaria’s tender, bittersweet comedy The Meddler, starring Susan Sarandon and J.K. Simmons, is marred by the occasional cliché, it’s also an unexpectedly perceptive film about loneliness, grief and mother-daughter relationships. After the death of her beloved husband,...
★★★☆☆ Heartstrings, prepared to be tugged at vigorously. Ma Ma is a quintessential tear-jerking melodrama that leans into its genre conventions heavily while still keeping an airy beauty to its characters and vision. Penélope Cruz’s charming turn as a breast...
★★★★☆ It’s hard to fathom how an Irish left-back could bring the international career of a footballing great to an end but Robbie Brady’s last-gasp winner rang the death knell for Sweden’s talismanic striker Zlatan Ibrahimović. With a forthcoming domestic...
★★★☆☆ Grief is not uncommon thematic ground for the cinema. Making sense of loss, the void to be filled and one’s individual reaction to bereavement is a tale as old as time. From a wealth of experience in the editing...
★★★★★ Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri are future stars. The titular protagonists of Ira Sachs’ Little Men give extraordinarily mature performances that belie their tender age. They feature in a perceptive, affecting family drama that channels the director’s characteristically graceful,...
★★☆☆☆ Featuring in the World Perspectives strand at Edinburgh, Trivisa is a Hong Kong production that takes place in the borderlands between the island and mainland China during the 1997 British handover. There is the kernel of a very good...
★★★★★ “My aim is to stay alive, I don’t want to die.” A plainly spoken objective from one subject of Juan Reina’s equally forthright, compelling and utterly breath-taking documentary Diving Into the Unknown, a stellar entry in Edinburgh’s Focus on...
★★★☆☆ Adapted from the stage play, Heaven Can Wait, Alexander Hall’s 1941 Here Comes Mr. Jordan is notable mainly for its numerous remakes and its position as arguably the first supernatural comedy. Following his untimely demise, boxer Joe Pendleton (Robert...
Filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović, partner of controversial helmer Gaspar Noé, brings her long-awaited second feature to cinema screens this Friday. Evolution is an intriguing, at times unfathomable but constantly mysterious and moody piece which morphs into an unsettling and sinister take...
★★★★☆ From Innocence director Lucile Hadžihalilović, Evolution is another one word title that provokes as much as it suggests. An enigmatic stone of a film, it’s a glowing entry in the sub-genre of fabulist science fiction of Never Let Me...