★★★☆☆ 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 old life with a radically new personality. The crisis arises not when she attempts to reconcile with her past, but […]
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 art, design, fashion, theatre and of course film. The Made in Prague film strand of the festival runs from 2-4 November. Fans […]
★★★★★ Hong Kong megastar Jackie Chan is as prolific as they come – last year alone, the 64-year-old had eight acting credits to his name – but it was 1983’s Project A which not only solidified his reputation back home, but it also brought […]
★★★★☆ Too Late to Die Young, the third feature from Chilean filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor Castillo, is a tale of growing up in a commune amidst nature and simpler ways of living. Having little by way of plot, the film has a gentle, freewheeling quality, […]
★★★☆☆ 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 the other about a woman recovering from heartbreak – unfold gently through idle conversations against a winter setting. At one point in […]
With the 20th edition of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star well underway, film professionals and cinema lovers flock to theatres across the city to get a taste of some of the year’s best international and regional fare. Vasan Bala’s Mard Ko […]
★★★★☆ 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 could almost have come from the deranged imagination of Marenghi himself, were it not for that character’s chronic lack of […]
★★★★☆ 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 long-lost indie movie of the same name that she shot in Singapore over 25 years ago. It’s kind of fitting […]
★★★★☆ LA, 1975. Feminism is taking off, and the women’s liberation movement in America is well underway. Joan Jett emerges, “like a naive kid” amongst the spark collisions of Bowie, Susie Quattro, quaaludes, Stonewall, the destruction of the nuclear family, the bomb, and the […]
★☆☆☆☆ 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 disjointed, oh-so-random plot points, but the end result is a desperately tiresome viewing experience. Do you like to, y’know, get […]
★★★☆☆ Michael Myers returns to slash through celluloid in David Gordon Green’s take on ‘The Shape’ and his karmic counterpoint, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), in Halloween. Aiming to restore Myers to his mythic and simplistic roots, Green fashions a slasher that both idolizes […]
Movie-lovers have always been fascinated by films on casinos and all manner of gambling – so much so that they offer a solid staple for Hollywood and major film producers around the world looking for box office hits and huge earnings. From Ocean’s 11 […]
★★★☆☆ Inspired by the book Laurel and Hardy: The British Tours by A.J. Marriot, who also featured as a consultant on the film, Jon S. Baird’s Stan & Ollie is part biography and part homage to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, arguably the greatest stage […]
★★★☆☆ In the 1990s, biographer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy), frustrated with lack of interest in a mooted project about vaudeville legend Fanny Brice, and struggling with money and alcohol issues, began a spree of literary forgery that amounted to over 400 faked letters. Melissa […]
Zheng Kai is one of China’s biggest actors, but in the West he’s hardly known. Promoting his latest film, Shadow, a visually striking period action epic from Zhang Yimou, the director of Hero, The House of Flying Daggers and The Great Wall, Zheng is hoping that all that is […]
★★★★☆ Hiding out in a cave for around a decade, legendary South African outlaw John Kepe (here played with unhinged momentum by Ezra Mabengeza) rustled sheep and terrorised white landowners until he was caught and hanged in 1952. In Sew the Winter to My […]
★★★★☆ Lords of Chaos charts the evolution of Norwegian black metal and the increasingly bitter rivalry between two major players on the scene, which in 1993 led to the murder of musician Øystein Aarseth. Informing the audience the film we’re about to see is […]
★★★☆☆ Assassination Nation plugs America and the age of social media full of bullet holes until the gun goes click. The problem with this mode of cinematic attack is it leaves a lot of splatter and mess. A comic strip bat-shit crazy, Sam Levinson’s […]
