Film reviews and more
Celebrated American director Alexander Payne’s high concept sci-fi comedy Downsizing will open the 74th Venice International Film Festival (30 August-9 September) in a spot that has become a great launchpad for Oscars success (see Gravity, Birdman and La La Land). Downsizing stars Matt Damon who […]
★★★☆☆ Howards End makes a gleaming return to cinemas across the UK and remains as crisp and clipped as the perfect diction of its exemplary cast. Thanks to a scintillating 4K restoration, this painterly Merchant-Ivory classic shines ever more brightly on our screens once more.James […]
★★★★☆ Silliness abounds in Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, which hails from DreamWorks Animation, the studio that reaped massive success from their most recent children’s novel series adaptation How to Train Your Dragon (a third is on the way).This time, it’s Dav Pilkey’s books […]
★★★☆☆ Lisa (Mandy Moore) has just been dumped by her boyfriend for being too boring. To prove him wrong, Lisa goes on holiday to Mexico with her sister, Kate (Claire Holt). Kate convinces Lisa she needs an adventure, in the form of cage diving with […]
★★★★★ While only Westfront 1918 is set during the First World War, it and Kameradschaft are about the madness, futility and trauma of that conflict. Set in the final months of the war, Westfront 1918 is Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s first sound film.Kameradschaft, released the following […]
★★★★★ Arguably Andrei Tarkovsky’s finest masterpiece, the Russian director’s 1979 film Stalker is the culmination of a career-long preoccupation with memory, trauma and the relationship between subjective perception and physical reality. Following a mysterious disaster that rendered a small town uninhabitable, the eponymous Stalker (Alexksanr […]
★★★★☆ It’s rare to see a rites of passage film told exclusively from the female perspective. With this BFI-sanctioned re-release, we’re privy to not one but two young women as they awkwardly navigate their way through adolescence. Diane Kurys’ 1977 autobiographical debut – known in […]
★★★★★ June 1940. Four-hundred thousand British soldiers prepare for evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk. While Privates Alex (Harry Styles), Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), and Gibson (Aneurin Barnard) await rescue, RAF pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy) and pleasure-boat skipper Dawson (Mark Rylance) rush to help their comrades […]
★★☆☆☆ Blending various influences from the likes of The Conversation, Blow Out and perhaps most closely The Lives of Others by German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Scribe is an efficient, albeit underwhelming evocation of these surveillance thriller masterpieces.Though it does not come close to […]
★★★★★ Documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman’s City of Ghosts is a humbling, stunning exposé that focuses on the resistance to oppression embodied by the Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently group of pioneering citizen journalists. From 2012 onwards they have punched a hole through ISIS’s ruthless propaganda […]
Out of all gambling games portrayed in movies, roulette has to be the most popular. Roulette has been portrayed in movies of all types, from comedies and dramas to action-packed thrillers. Here are the best all-time roulette movies.Diamonds Are ForeverLegendary secret agent James Bond can […]
★★★★☆ In 2011, no one thought that Rise of the Planet of the Apes would be much cop. But not only did this plucky prequel prove to be terrific fun, it spawned one of the best trilogies in recent years: its closing chapter, War for […]