It is light that allows us to see and differentiate colours. Light in the film industry lets the viewers see the idea lying behind the film. The quality and type of light chosen creates the proper angle that deepens the emotions and sharpens the […]
★★★★☆ American director Tony Zierra’s latest documentary Filmworker chronicles a tale of dedication and sacrifice in the service of art and will be a must for Stanley Kubrick – and now Leon Vitali – fans everywhere. It isn’t often that an actor’s most prominent […]
★★★★☆ On a dark and stormy night, self-conscious genre tropes abound in James Whale’s riotously fun 1932 gothic chiller The Old Dark House. Five people find themselves stuck overnight in a creepy old mansion, tenanted by a bizarre brother and sister, their decrepit father […]
★★★★★ Based on the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925 and adapted from Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s play of the same name, Stanley Kramer’s 1960 film is a searing indictment of religious fundamentalism and anti-intellectualism. Inherit the Wind’s relevance continues beyond its immediate […]
★★☆☆☆ While a Yankee army train stops to restock its water supply, John Deakin (Charles Bronson) is caught cheating at cards at a nearby saloon. No sooner than he’s arrested and packed on to the train along with a state governor, his daughter and […]
The 71st edition of the Cannes Film Festival came to a close earlier today with Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda winning the coveted Palme d’Or for his devastating, brilliant and unconventional family portrait Shoplifters. This year’s Cannes began under a cumulus of clouds: the spat […]
★★☆☆☆ From director Ron Howard, Solo: A Star Wars Story blasts onto our screens starring Hail Caesar’s Alden Ehrenreich as the young man who was to become everyone’s favourite space cowboy. But does it jump into hyperspace or do we have a bad feeling […]
★★★★★ Stanley Kubrick’s visionary masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey returns to the big screen in a beautiful, newly-restored 70mm print, and proves once more the lasting quality of this epic piece of pure cinema. If you’ve never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, you’re in […]
★★★★★ The Wild Pear Tree is another towering cinematic experience from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The story of a father and son in conflict, it grapples with life’s big themes and the burden of family relationships. Ceylan’s films have the depth and richness […]
★★★★★ Sergey Dvortsevoy’s Ayka follows a young woman over five days bitterly cold days in a city she doesn’t really know. Attempting to flee from a terrible situation, but only finding an indifferent world and uncaring people, the Kazakhstani director has made one of […]
★★★☆☆ Yann Gonzalez follows up 2013’s You and the Night with Knife + Heart, another retro flick featuring lashings of perversity and kinky desire. The film is headlined by a tremendous Vanessa Paradis, starring as a gay-porno producer trying to get over a broken […]
★★★★☆ Lebanese actress and director Nadine Labaki’s third directorial feature, Capernaum, is a stirring and essential social-realist drama about lives trapped in abject poverty, featuring a superb central performance from Zain Alrafeea. Labaki’s modest debut film Caramel, which played in the Un Certain Regard programme, […]
★★★★☆ One year on from the release of Nick Broomfield’s Whitney: Can I Be Me, Kevin MacDonald’s Whitney proves that there is always room for another documentary on the pop music icon. With access to close family and friends, MacDonald’s emotional documentary seeks to […]
★★☆☆☆ It Follows director David Robert Mitchell returns to cinemas – and MUBI in the UK – this week with his third feature Under the Silver Lake, starring Andrew Garfield and Riley Keough. Firmly dividing critics at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, there’s sadly little […]
★★☆☆☆ Edward Mayhew (Billy Howle) and Florence Ponting (Saoirse Ronan) are young, beautiful and in love. They’ve just married and taken a honeymoon on Chesil Beach in Dorset, where their marriage, and lives, slowly begin to unfold. As prestige literary adaptations go, On Chesil Beach has […]
★★★☆☆ Italian director Matteo Garrone returns to UK cinemas this week with a movie a world away from the English-language fantasy Tale of Tales. Crime flick Dogman is a solid effort bearing the influence and heritage of Neorealism and Federico Fellini. Marcello (Marcello Fonte) is […]
★★★★☆ Stéphane Brizé and Vincent Lindon are fast becoming the Scorsese and De Niro of French social realist cinema. Their latest effort, At War, depicts union workers involved in strike action and a fight for self-respect and dignity. At War is a gripping leftist […]
★★★☆☆ Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Hot Docs 2017, Chris Kelly’s A Cambodian Spring is an intimate and upsetting account of community activism and the shaping of modern Cambodia. “This is a fake democracy,” says a resident of the area around Boeung […]
