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 also turns up in George Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ 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 Ivory’s adaptation of EM Forster’s Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 that are receiving the big Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ 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 sharks, through a sketchy company Continue Reading
★★★★★ 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 year, depicts a group of Continue Reading
★★★★★ 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 Kaydanovskiy) illegally takes visitors in Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 its native country of France Continue Reading
★★★★★ 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 in arms.Opening on the streets Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ 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 its lofty aspirations, the film Continue Reading
★★★★★ 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 to tell the world the Continue Reading
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 be seen carousing in casinos Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 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 the Planet of the Apes, Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ In Ian Dunlop’s biography of Louis XIV he describes the Sun King’s death, saying that he “yielded up his soul without any effort, like a candle going out.” Slow cinema maestro Albert Serra clearly didn’t take to that notion when he decided to make The Death of Louis XIV.Louis Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ In what is a marked improvement on its predecessor, Cars 3 – the final part of Pixar’s series about anthropomorphic automobiles – delivers dazzling visuals and an entertaining story, despite a spoon-feeding approach to communicating the usual family-friendly messages.Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) has been racing for years, winning time Continue Reading
★★★★☆ “We need chloroform and water” orders boarding school headmistress Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman), like Mary Poppins getting her charges in order. It’s a surprise she doesn’t say “spit-spot”. It’s this sense of female imperturbability which makes The Beguiled so subversive.Sofia Coppola ditches the wayward sexual politics of Don Siegel’s Continue Reading