★★★★★ The films produced in the inter-war period in Germany were among the most vibrant, innovative and politically charged in all cinema. As part of the BFI’s season of Weimar Cinema, running throughout May and June, one of the its greatest examples is back […]
The full programme for this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival has been revealed, bolstering 18 world premieres and 72 UK premieres of films brought to the Scottish capital from countries all over. Now in its 73rd year, the world’s longest continuously running film festival […]
★★★☆☆ “Let them fight” was the raison d’etre of Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, the kaiju-centric creature feature that kickstarted Legendary Studio’s monster-verse back in 2014. Michael Dougherty’s sequel, King of the Monsters has certainly taken its forbear’s mantra to heart, offering up a smackdown between Godzilla and his most iconic enemies, […]
★★★★☆ Opening with an excruciating but perversely funny funeral scene, Thunder Road is unapologetic in showing the rawness and devastation death can have on people. Eulogising his dead mother – via a humiliatingly awful song and dance routine – is Texan police officer Jim […]
★★★☆☆ The uniquely American phenomenon of Hooters-style sports bars provides the subject matter for Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls. More Cassavettes than Coyote Ugly, the film rarely concerns itself too deeply with the politics of such establishments, preferring instead to take a softer, human […]
For decades, Hollywood has enjoyed an incredibly close relationship with casinos; whether it’s the countless major movies that have been based in and around casinos and the casino industry or the multi-millionaire movie stars which regularly make their way to big-name casinos to try […]
★★★☆☆ It seems there has long been a need for graciously uncool female protagonists in the teen coming-of-age canon, those who remind us of ourselves a little more than the 90s girls from the likes of Empire Records or The Craft that we wished […]
★★★★☆ In 2010, US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison after she leaked classified documents and footage of military operations in Iraq. In 2013, Manning (born Bradley Manning) came out as a transgender woman, before her sentence was […]
★★★☆☆ Movies love certain professions and psychotherapy is certainly one. They have to listen to people’s problems while (usually) masking their own issues. From Richard Burton in Equus to Billy Crystal in Analyse This, there’s an undoubted attraction to a job which involves lots […]
It’s been a vintage edition of the Cannes Film Festival, with many excellent contenders in the competition. The Palme d’Or went to South Korean director Bong Joon-ho and his masterful black comedy thriller Parasite. It was a popular choice that bested Quentin Tarantino’s Once […]
★★★☆☆ Bertrand Bonello’s arthouse horror oddity Zombi Child works best as a film about colonial trauma and the tragic history of Haiti. Those expecting a traditional zombie flick with flesh-eating ghouls clawing at the doors will soon learn this one is more Jacques Tourneur […]
★★☆☆☆ It’s time Cannes called a moratorium on screening the films of French director Arnaud Desplechin until he can come back with work as good as A Christmas Tale. Oh Mercy! has no business competing for the Palme d’Or. Co-written with Léa Mysius, who […]
★★★★★ Families on the lower end of the pay scale have proven fertile ground for filmmakers of late, from Hirokazy Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or-winning Shoplifters to Ken Loach’s latest Sorry We Missed You. But you’d be hard-put to find anything with the acerbic brilliance of […]
★★★★★ Before the first screening of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, an official from the Cannes Film Festival mounted the stage and read a statement from director Quentin Tarantino and the producers asking that critics try to avoid spoilers in our reviews and […]
★★★★☆ A highly flammable love affair smoulders in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is a painter with a spark in her eye. Although she is always aware of convention and tradition, she also knows how to bend the […]
★★★☆☆ Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound serves as a history lesson and welcome tribute to a crucial element of moviemaking routinely ignored. Critics love to zero in on the relationship between directors and their stars, or directors and cinematographers, but rarely (if […]
★★★★☆ Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán’s The Cordillera of Dreams caps off an astonishing set of history-focused essay films, beginning with Nostalgia for the Light and continuing with The Pearl Button. The trilogy represents one of the great artistic statements of the decade. Closer to […]
★★★★★ There’s something heartening about genius being put in the service of madness. Already this Cannes we’ve seen the exemplar in a fully restored 4K version of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, but at the Quinzaine a sea-change took place. Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse is […]
