Month: September 2017
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Film Review: Borg vs McEnroe
★★★★☆ Wimbledon, 1980. John McEnroe (Shia LeBeouf) has reached the final of the men’s singles, despite his short temper with umpires and growing public unpopularity. Facing off against McEnroe is the seemingly unstoppable Björn Borg (an uncanny Sverrir Gudnason). Director Janus Metz’s Borg vs McEnroe may well be inspired by the real tennis rivalry, but…
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DVD Review: Suntan
★★★★☆ Billed as a “coming of middle-age story”, the first 20 minutes of Suntan is easily mistaken for a charming melodrama about rediscovering one’s youth. But this tale of obsession, emotional immaturity and entitlement is much more interesting, and darker, than that.Kostis (Efthymis Papadimitriou) arrives as the new doctor an small, unnamed Greek island. Arriving…
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Criterion Review: It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
★★★☆☆ A critical success on release, the enormous budget of Stanley Kramer’s 1963 epic comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World meant that it only just scraped a profit. The premise: a group of strangers race across America to try to get to a rumoured buried treasure.It’s worth noting that the extended version included…
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Toronto 2017: Three Billboards wins People’s Choice Award
As the 2017 Toronto Film Festival closes, we take a look at our top picks from the festival. Despite already premiering in Venice, Darren Aronofsky’s unhinged Mother! created the most buzz on the ground, garnering rave reviews from festival-goers and critics alike.Sadly, that hasn’t translated to box office success, with the film flopping at the…
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Toronto 2017: Valley of Shadows review
★★★★★ Using the folkloric tropes of a deep, dark wood and tales of a beast terrorising the countryside, with his feature debut Valley of Shadows Norwegian director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen has crafted one of the year’s finest, most deeply affecting psychological dramas.As with all the best ghost stories, this one starts with a family in…
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Toronto 2017: Lady Bird review
★★★★★ Following her co-director credit on 2008’s Nights and Weekends, Greta Gerwig goes it alone directing Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird. A lovingly observed, pitch perfect coming-of-age comedy, Gerwig’s warm, astute account of the end of adolescence is a stunning solo debut. High school senior Christine (Ronan) – now insisting that she is called ‘Lady…
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Toronto 2017: Dark River review
★★★★☆ Following this year’s The Levelling and God’s Own Country, the decaying farmlands of rural England appear to be replacing the urban concrete high-rise as the preferred setting for British social realism. Clio Barnard’s Dark River may well be the cream of this particular crop.Barnard, whose Yorkshire-centric filmography already includes doc-hybrid The Arbor and The…
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Toronto 2017: Darkest Hour review
★★☆☆☆ Unpopular with his own cabinet and under pressure to enter into peace negotiations with Nazi Germany, once he became PM Winston Churchill’s character became symbolic of wartime spirit, his rousing speeches among the most famous examples of political oratory. What a shame, then, that the portrayal of such a figure should be fumbled so…
