MAMI 2018: Fugue review
★★★☆☆ In Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska’s fantasy-infused psychological drama Fugue, a woman loses her memory following a traumatic incident and comes back to her...
★★★☆☆ It’s 1918, and the elderly woman that terrorised the screaming youths of X is still a tender young thing, stuck on her parents’ farm and dreaming of a life of stardom in faraway Hollywood. How far removed from that wizened psychotic killer this cherubic vision now stands.
★★★★☆ There is tragedy and there is comedy, but the hinterland has never really received a proper definition. Melodrama suggests histrionics and musical accompaniment milking the emotional teat. Drama is too broad. And anyone who suggests “dramedy” should be punished. It would be “dramedic”.
★★★★☆ One year on from the events of the previous franchise entry, Ghostface is up to their old tricks again, slicing and dicing their way through a new batch of shrieking victims, the action now shifted to New York. With the new generation of Screamers now firmly installed, headed by the Carpenter sisters Sam and Tara (Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega), can the ghost(face)s of the past be laid to rest?
★★★☆☆ His heavyweight champion status secured, the now-retired Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) spends his days lounging around his Hollywood mansion, having tea parties with daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent) and running his gym with coach Little Duke (Wood Harris). But when a long-forgotten figure from Adonis’ past returns, his future is thrown into question.
★★★★★ Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are best friends. At 13, they are intelligent and autonomous enough to be allowed a certain freedom, but still full of the childish and spontaneous joy of being and imagining. They pretend villains are attacking the castle, run through the flower fields, and have so many sleepovers together that Leo’s mum wonders aloud if he’ll ever come home.
★★★☆☆ “Family isn’t a word…it’s a sentence”. So ran the tagline to The Royal Tenenbaums. For Hirokazu Kore-eda it could be argued that it’s a whole career. From Still Walking to the Palme d’Or-winning Shoplifters, the Japanese auteur has spent the greater part of his career delineating the lines of attraction and repulsion, the dynamics of duty and care that make up families – both real and alternative.
★★★☆☆ In Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska’s fantasy-infused psychological drama Fugue, a woman loses her memory following a traumatic incident and comes back to her...
To mark the centenary of the Czech Republic’s independence, the Czech100 Festival runs from 28 October to the 9 December, a celebration of Czech...
★★★★★ Hong Kong megastar Jackie Chan is as prolific as they come – last year alone, the 64-year-old had eight acting credits to his...
★★★★☆ Too Late to Die Young, the third feature from Chilean filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor Castillo, is a tale of growing up in a commune...
★★★☆☆ Shot in muted black and white, South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s Hotel by the River lets two stories – one about a poet getting ready to die and...
With the 20th edition of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star well underway, film professionals and cinema lovers flock to theatres across...
★★★★☆ Best-known as the mind behind horror spoof series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Matthew Holness’ debut feature Possum is anything but comic. Indeed, the imagery Holness conjures here...
★★★★☆ Sandi Tan’s luminous and shape-shifting documentary Shirkers is a journey back in time through the 16mm reels and sinister true story of the...
★★★★☆ LA, 1975. Feminism is taking off, and the women’s liberation movement in America is well underway. Joan Jett emerges, “like a naive kid”...
★☆☆☆☆ The Greasy Strangler director Jim Hosking’s second feature, An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, tries to make a virtue out of extreme silliness and...
★★★☆☆ Michael Myers returns to slash through celluloid in David Gordon Green’s take on ‘The Shape’ and his karmic counterpoint, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee...
Movie-lovers have always been fascinated by films on casinos and all manner of gambling – so much so that they offer a solid staple...
★★★☆☆ Inspired by the book Laurel and Hardy: The British Tours by A.J. Marriot, who also featured as a consultant on the film, Jon...
★★★☆☆ In the 1990s, biographer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy), frustrated with lack of interest in a mooted project about vaudeville legend Fanny Brice, and...