★★★★☆ Ten years, nineteen films and the most audacious experiment in franchise filmmaking ever: the conclusion to Marvel’s grand project has finally arrived. The biggest entry in the studio’s series to date, Avengers: Infinity War is at once exhausting, exhilarating and triumphant. Thanos is […]
★★★★☆ Loosely based on the ‘Beast of Jersey’ serial killer who terrorised island residents in the 1960s, writer-director Michael Pearce’s feature debut is an ambitious, deliciously dark psychodrama. Bolstered by two star performances, Beast is equal parts modern gothic fairytale and crime thriller. Following […]
★★★☆☆ Cary Grant will forever be one of Hollywood’s brightest stars. But icons rarely come fully formed, and Leo McCarey’s 1937 film was where Grant’s persona finally coalesced after a string of so-so supporting roles. The latest addition to the Criterion Collection, The Awful Truth […]
★★★★★ A series of brutal killings, happening seemingly at random and by multiple killers, are connected by strange ‘X’ shapes carved into the victims’ chests. The perpetrators are apparently unmotivated and cannot account for their actions. When detective Takabe (Kōji Yakusho) is called to […]
Years are just twelve months during which excellent, and some not that awesome, movies are released. Every film fan greets each new year with a long list of titles that are expected to hit the theatres in the months to come, hopeful to see […]
In a sea of incredibly strange films, there are thousands upon thousands of moving pictures that have made the world a better place through their storylines. Thanks to the internet we now have the opportunity to find about absolutely everything that pops in our […]
It’s hard to believe people found horror movies scary in the past. If Frankenstein’s monster or Count Dracula graced the screen today, young kids wouldn’t even flinch. Adults would walk out of the theater. Ghosts were even worse because they stuck actors underneath white […]
★★★★☆ One of the most important filmmakers in Taiwan, Hou Hsiao-Hsien was once lauded as “one of the three directors most crucial to the future of cinema”. This new Masters of Cinema set from Eureka incorporates three of Hou’s early films: Cute Girl, The […]
★★☆☆☆ The plot of Blumhouse’s latest horror Truth or Dare, in so far as it can be discerned by human eyes, sees a group of sexy college students getting lured into a deadly drinking game whilst on Spring Break in Mexico. So far, so […]
★★★★☆ Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa (My Joy, In the Fog, Maidan) returns to fiction filmmaking with A Gentle Creature: a gloomy, timely tale of a nameless woman trying to track down her incarcerated husband in remote rural Russia. Since his last fictional work with In the […]
★★★★★ The expression goes “Home is where the heart is”, but in Valeska Grisebach’s terrific new film Western, home is somewhere to escape from in pursuit of fresh experiences, new opportunities, home is associated with painful memories and familial scars. As in the genre […]
Xavier Legrand is an actor and director whose Just Before Losing Everything was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. His first feature Custody, a powerful film which explores the anguish and anxiety caused by a violent father, won the Silver […]
★★★★☆ In France, a woman dies every two and a half days as a result of domestic violence. Xavier Legrand’s feature debut, Custody, a hard-hitting social drama and winner of the Silver Lion, attempts to raise awareness of this harrowing subject through the powerful […]
With the lead-up dominated by thinkpieces over Netflix’s exclusion from this year’s Cannes competition lineup, it was something of a relief to finally be able to discuss the film’s that would be vying for the Palme d’Or and Un Certain Regard accolades. With 18 out […]
★☆☆☆☆ In UK cinemas this Friday, acclaimed American director Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven, Carol) misses his target with unusually high frequency as he takes on The Invention of Hugo Cabret author Brian Selznick’s excessively earnest YA novel Wonderstruck. It’s been a little over two […]
★★★☆☆ James Crump’s latest documentary explores the coterie of artists, models and writers who formed around the pioneering fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez. A passionate and romantic figure, Lopez makes for a dynamic subject in a film sadly lacking in narrative excitement. Working alongside his […]
★★★★☆ Making its world premiere last year at Cannes and walking off with the Grand Prix, Robin Campillo’s AIDS drama 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) is a skillfully woven and at times unbearably sad portrait of activists living, to quote a line in the film, […]
★★★★☆ With two high-profile sci-fis offloaded to Netflix in recent months – one sagely (The Cloverfield Paradox), the other more controversially (Annihilation, given its strong reviews) – you’d be forgiven for questioning whether Paramount still had the stomach for releasing high concept genre works […]
