Film Review: The Dreamed Ones
★★★★☆ A few years after the end of the Second World War, a man whose parents perished in a concentration camp and a woman whose father was a Nazi party member met and fell deeply in love. The man’s name...
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30 May 2023
Film Review: Master Gardener
★★★☆☆ 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.
22 May 2023
Film Review: Move Me No Mountain
★★☆☆☆ 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.
19 May 2023
Film Review: Beau Is Afraid
★★★☆☆ 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.
Monthly Archive: November 2016
Film Review: The Coming War on China
★★★☆☆ Since Donald Trump won the US Presidential election there’s been a whole smorgasbord of geo-political anxieties to keep you awake at night. Oliver Stone’s Snowden was a timely reminder of the massive repressive state apparatus of para-legal or illegal...
Film Review: Chi-Raq
★★★★☆ From School Daze, Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X onwards, fans of Spike Lee have come to expect a certain well-articulated intelligence and socio-political engagement to the Atlanta-born director’s bold and unflinching brand of cinema. The last decade...
Film Review: Bleed For This
★★★☆☆ How many times has the line “Give me another shot” been uttered in a boxing movie? What is it about these fiercely stubborn, bloodied and bruised fighters that means they just don’t know when to throw in the towel?...
DVD Review: Tickled
★★★☆☆ It’s unlikely you’re going to come across too many documentaries this year with a yarn to spin as tangled and twisted as Tickled. Following the investigations of New Zealand pop culture journalist David Farrier, it is essentially an expose...
DVD Review: Jason Bourne
★★★☆☆ When The Bourne Ultimatum was released in 2007, star Matt Damon felt that the story of his amnesiac-assassin protagonist had been told. “The story of this guy’s search for his identity is over” he said, before stating that only...
DVD Review: Finding Dory
★★★★☆ Taking a swim down memory lane is a tricky business when you forget things and repeat yourself every few seconds. Finding Dory is as entertaining, soul enriching and bittersweet as any Pixar production to date. Once again striking just...
Interview: Golshifteh Farahani, Paterson
Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani rose to international fame alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott’s 2008 film, Body of Lies. She’s been busy, and constantly on the move, since then though her most memorable role for many cinephiles...
Film Review: The Wailing
★★★★★ Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing hits such a spectacular home run that the ball will never be recovered from its landing spot. Not only is the film a compellingly told tale of suspense and terror, but it’s crafted with such...
Film Review: A United Kingdom
★★★☆☆ November 2016. A member of the Royal family is forced to defend his chosen partner in the face of an unscrupulous right-wing press, with the suggestion in some commentaries of negative racial undertones. It’s hard to fathom, and deeply...
Film Review: Starless Dreams
★★★★★ “Here the pain drips from the walls,” says Somayeh, an inmate of a juvenile female detention centre on the outskirts of Tehran. Somayeh is one of the subjects of Mehrdad Oskouei’s remarkable documentary Starless Dreams. She’s one of the...
Film Review: Paterson
★★★★☆ Paterson teaches us that there is beauty to be found in all things. Poetry, meaning and further dimensions to even the most mundane trivialities of everyday existence. In Jim Jarmusch’s latest, which takes place in contemporary New Jersey, Adam...