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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★★☆ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★★★ 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 […]
★★★★★ 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 […]
★★★★☆ 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 […]
★★★★★ 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 […]
★★☆☆☆ 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 […]
★★★★★ 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 […]
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 […]
★★★★☆ 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 […]
★★☆☆☆ 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 […]
★★★☆☆ 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 […]
★★★★☆ “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 […]
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival returned for its 52nd year from 30 June-8 July. The beautiful spa town on the edge of the Slavkov forest in Western Bohemia played host to A-list stars and directors from around the world.As ever, showcased were some […]
★★★★☆ Georgian director Rati Oneli’s City of the Sun is in a constant dialogue with philosophical treatise and epic poetry, but the humanity shines through in his meditative exploration of a half-abandoned mining town.The title of City of the Sun is taken from a […]
★★★★☆ Ain’t Them Bodies Saints director David Lowery channels slow cinema maestros Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tsai Ming-liang in A Ghost Story, a beautiful meditation on grief, time, and place which screened at Karlovy Vary.It doesn’t start out that way, though. Initially, A Ghost Story […]
