Film reviews and more
★★★★☆ “The difference between film and memory is that films are always false”, muses protagonist Luo Hongwu (Huang Jue) early on in Long Day’s Journey into Night. If what we see, like Hongwu’s own perspective, is unreliable, and if we can’t even trust the narrator of the story, then how can we believe […]
Tail-ended by superb new offerings from the likes of Martin Scorsese (The Irishman), Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) and Greta Gerwig (Little Women), 2019 has been a vintage year for not only American filmmaking but world cinema. Our top picks of 2019 reflect some of the quality and variety of this year’s film offerings. […]
★☆☆☆☆ Rey (Daisy Ridley) is continuing her force training, now under the tutelage of Leia (a disturbingly reanimated Carrie Fisher). Meanwhile, we are told that Supreme Leader Kylo Ren is consumed with a quest to find the ultimate evil in the galaxy. Forty years and nine episodes in the making, can J.J. Abrams’ […]
With Netflix’s The Irishman and Marriage Story dominating early awards season debate – and both featuring in our collective top ten – the streaming platforms have truly arrived as major contenders to the traditional studios. And it wasn’t just in the field of English-language filmmaking that Netflix made major gains. World cinema has […]
★★★★☆ Alex Gibney returns with this gripping study of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch-turned-activist who was sentenced to nine years in prison after challenging Vladimir Putin. Power corrupts, the saying goes, but in Gibney’s new documentary, ultimate power – or at least the kind wielded by the once-richest man in Russia – appears […]
While the likes of Paul Feig’s Last Christmas and the 2018 reboot of Dr Seuss’s The Grinch may have performed well at the UK box office, critics largely turned their noses up at both (the latter has a score of just 59% on Rotten Tomatoes). So where have all the great Christmas films gone? […]
If there was ever a way to catch the attention of your audience, it’s with an eye-catching film poster. Posters alone can bring people into the cinema to see a new film, and a lot of effort goes into the process. From the design to poster printing, there is a lot to take […]
★★★★☆ Following his 2017 documentary Last Men in Aleppo, Feras Fayyad returns to the humanitarian crisis in Syria, this time in the besieged city of Ghouta and its underground hospital, known as “The Cave”. Under siege for five years until 2018, Fayyad’s haunting documentary follows hospital manager Amani Ballour and her brave team […]
We’re getting close to the end of 2019, and while some people are letting out sighs of relief upon hearing that, most us movie enthusiasts still have a lot to hold on for. The new Joker movie was recently released and by the time we process everything that happened there, we’ll also have […]
Seeing out its 23rd edition as the snow gently fell outside of Tallinn’s Russian Theatre, the Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) yesterday crowned Anshul Chauhan’s Japanese father and daughter tale Kontora (pictured above) as the Grand Prix winner, with the Best Director award going to Filippino filmmaker Jun Robles Jana for Kalel (15), […]
★★★★★ Among the greatest living filmmakers in the world, Martin Scorsese has defined American cinema for a generation. His work has encompassed family melodrama, historical fiction, comedies, musicals, and psychological thrillers, but it is his concern with crime that has defined his career. In The Irishman, the master director has made his definitive, […]
★★★☆☆ Turning the traditional story of Punch and Judy on its head with a joyously feminist reinterpretation, debut writer and director Mirrah Foulkes offers an accomplished delight with Judy & Punch. Set in the anarchic and outlandish town of Seaside – which, ironically, is located nowhere near the coast – puppeteers Judy and […]
Sometimes the most iconic heroes are only as good as their villains are. Super strength, being able to fly, and time travel, are obviously cool superpowers but sometimes all fans want to see is a great head-to-head battle with a superhero versus villain fight. Over the past few years, both comic book heroes […]
As the nights have drawn in over the last couple of months, the crop of home video release have been especially abundant. Criterion’s release of The Naked Kiss on 2nd September was the first of a number of Samuel Fuller titles – a suburban noir baked in sexual hypocrisy, misogyny and violence. Meanwhile, […]
It’s the burning topic right now – who is the best Joker that ever played in a DC movie? We’ve spared you the trouble and selected five top picks based on a few criteria. One of them is the quality of performance and good acting. The second is believability and the ability to […]
★★★★☆ Now into his sixth decade as a director, Ken Loach has followed up the Palme D’Or-winning I, Daniel Blake with another hard-hitting work of social realism. Teaming up once more with regular screenwriter Paul Laverty, Sorry We Missed You offers a scathing assessment of zero-hour contracts and the damaging effects the gig […]
★★★★☆ Films about filmmaking are nothing new. From Truffaut’s visionary Day for Night to The Disaster Artist, film adores observing the magic of moviemaking. However, a lesser-explored area of filmmaking is the depiction of disability and specifically neurofibromatosis on screen. Aaron Schimberg’s second feature, Chained for Life, hones in on the representation of […]
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to actually stay at The Shining’s Overlook Hotel? Or perhaps book a real-life holiday to Jurassic Park. Well, Betway has put together a handy guide to six of the most desirable staycations ripped straight from the silver screen. CANTO BIGHT (The Last Jedi) The Las Vegas […]