Edinburgh 2017: The Little Hours review
★★☆☆☆ It’s a who’s who of comedic talent in The Little Hours, which puts a modern spin on The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio’s collection of...
★★★☆☆ Set 45,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens were making incursions into the lands of the Neanderthals, Andrew Cumming’s horror thriller The Origin depicts a small tribe coming up against a malefic entity in unknown and inhospitable environs.
★★★★★ Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer are a little-known writing and directing partnership based in Brooklyn, New York. But their standing is due a considerable elevation on the strength of God’s Creatures, a film that wields its simple premise with devastating impact.
Returning for its 26th edition and with 2021’s Covid restrictions largely a thing of the past, Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) this year crowned Hilmar Oddsson’s Icelandic dark comedy Driving Mum as the 2022 Grand Prix winner, with the Best Director award going to Ahmad Bahrami for thriller The Wastetown.
The head of this year’s Venice jury Julianne Moore awarded the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, to Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, her profile of artist Nan Goldin and her campaign against the Sackler family. It’s a brilliant, committed piece of activist cinema.
★★★☆☆ Celebrated British director Joanna Hogg is back on the Venice Lido with The Eternal Daughter, a film shot in secret in lockdown and starring The Souvenir’s Tilda Swinton in dual roles as a mother and daughter heading to a hotel in the countryside for a much-needed birthday vacation.
★★★☆☆ 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.
★★☆☆☆ It’s a who’s who of comedic talent in The Little Hours, which puts a modern spin on The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio’s collection of...
★★★☆☆ This culture clash comedy in the vein of late 1990s classic East Is East is warm-hearted, funny and light-footed. Raghdan (Nikesh Patel) lives...
★★☆☆☆ Up in the Scottish highlands on a break to try and rescue their fledging relationship, Louise (Rebecca Calder) and Claire (Deirdre Mullins) endure...
★★★☆☆ Laura Poitras returns with another probing political documentary, but this time the film’s own post production proves as fascinating as its whistle-blowing subject....
★★★★☆ The latest high profile Netflix feature, Bong Joon-ho’s Okja is lumbering, clumsy but ultimately as loveable as its eponymous star: it’s Babe on...
★★★★☆ Baby Driver, writer and director Edgar Wright’s first film since capping off the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy with The World’s End, combines elements...
★★★★☆ Honouring and recognising the city of London through the power of images set to a beautifully orchestrated score, London Symphony – the crowdfunded...
★★★★☆ “There was nothing before Sonja, and there is nothing after her.” Crack the cantankerous outer-shell of the boorish pensioner who stands head and...
★★☆☆☆ British actors Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson star as unexpected Nazi resistors Anna and Otto Quangel in Vincent Perez’s Alone in Berlin, adapted...
★★☆☆☆ For the initiated and uninitiated alike, Benny Boom’s All Eyez On Me will be seen as an opportunity missed. Never putting its larger...