★★★☆☆ There’s something about the brightness of the Greek sunshine that leaves the blackest of shadows. You can see it in the tragi-comedies of Athina Rachel Tsangari and Yorgos Lanthimos. Now, Argyris Papadimitropoulos joins the fray with Suntan, a study in middle-aged loneliness. In a wintry prologue, Kostis (Makis Papadimitriou) arrives Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The blunt moors of the British countryside provide the backdrop to Lady Macbeth, a caustic drama adapted by playwright Alice Birch from Nikolai Leskov’s controversial novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District. Its star is Florence Pugh, a relative newcomer already making waves thanks to her committed performance here.Pugh, Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ The essence of Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s LA 92 is that many, many wrongs do not make a right. Branching out as a pulsing artery of Ezra Edelman’s monolithic O.J.: Made in America, this bracing but slightly uneven documentary focuses on the catalysts for the Los Angeles riots Continue Reading
Is death really the end? Katell Quillévéré’s Heal the Living argues that death is merely the start of a much larger process. Adapted from Maylis de Kerangal’s International Booker Prize-nominated novel Mend the Living, Quillévéré’s latest is a medical procedural set over 24 hours. We chart the transmigration of a Continue Reading
★★★★☆ For a movie concerned with death, French director Katell Quillévéré’s Heal the Living begins with a shot that manages to capture just what it means to be alive. The film opens on 17-year-old Simon (Gabin Verdet), lying in bed with his girlfriend Juliette (Galatéa Bellugi).It’s the early hours of Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Three years on from their first outing, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy return with Volume 2. The result is a difficult second album that attempts to rekindle the hijinks of the first with a popping-candy aesthetic, but sadly lacks in narrative drive.The film opens in the 1980s. Quill’s Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey, a six-year-old American pageant queen who was killed in her family home in Boulder, Colorado in 1996, is an ideal story for the Making a Murderer model of investigatory non-fiction filmmaking.Blending and bending genres to highlight the elusiveness of the truth, Kitty Green’s Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Do you dabble in kale? Nina (a wonderful Tanya Fear), the lead protagonist of Shola Amoo’s docudrama A Moving Image, jokingly says she could eat it all day, every day. While chomping down on the unappetising health food, the suggestion of a grimace plays on her face.With the camera Continue Reading
★★★★★ Of the countless films director Kenji Mizoguchi made over his career, The Life of Oharu is said to be among his favourites, and Criterion’s welcome home release of his 1952 masterpiece is proof of both its aesthetic quality and narrative power. The eponymous Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) is a young Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Eureka Entertainment have been fortuitous in releasing this debut from famed action director Walter Hill while he’s enjoying a renewed interest in his past works. In actuality, this is probably more down to the fanfare around Edgar Wright’s upcoming homage to the director Baby Driver than Hill’s own recent, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Amongst the Rush Hours and the Spies Next Door of his latter-day career, it’s easy to forget that Jackie Chan was once the rightful successor to the screen’s greatest martial artist, Bruce Lee. Eureka’s new release of the 1978 Drunken Master, one of Chan’s earliest and best pictures, is Continue Reading
There’s something about gangster movies that makes them incredibly appealing to a broad cinemagoing audience. Sometimes people watch them to get the adrenaline rush, on other occasions they are more interested in the story. Top-notch acting is always the recipe for success, but Hollywood and British cinema chose to walk Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Their Finest is a nostalgic, jolly hockey sticks moving picture. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. “Authenticity informed by optimism” is the name of the game for British propaganda productions concerned with the morale of a blitzed public during World War Two. Danish director Lone Scherfig’s film about Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ A public bathroom. Noises are coming from one of the stalls. Sucking and slurping sounds. A man takes a peek underneath and makes a quick exit. It’s revealed that Milo (Eric Ruffin), a black youth in Queens who believes himself to be a vampire, has claimed another victim.David O’Shea’s Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Howard Hughes has long been an object of fascination for Hollywood. The reclusive mogul carved a trajectory from youthful genius to self-watering stuff of legend as clear and elusive as the vapour trails of one of the airplanes that sustained his fortune. From Martin Scorsese’s straight biopic The Aviator Continue Reading
