August’s releases run the gamut from horror, urban thrillers, social justice and tender drama. While themes of modernity, paranoia and urban life prominently feature in this month’s lineup, headed by the likes of Kiss Me Deadly, The Incident, and Do The Right Thing, so too does nature and its relationship to human society – Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ The Dreyfus Affair is chronicled as a turn of the century espionage thriller worthy of Le Carré in Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy. There was a good chance that his film could have been withdrawn after the head of the jury Lucrecia Martel let rip with her Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ It’s the near future: a time of “conflict and hope”, according to the first title cards of James Gray’s latest offering, the space drama Ad Astra. Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is an unflappable astronaut with ice in his veins, and whose pulse doesn’t redline even as he falls to Earth Continue Reading
★★★★★ The Squid and the Whale director Noah Baumbach returns with his latest Netflix collaboration, Marriage Story, which sublimely manages to find humour and humanity in the mutually assured destruction of a messy divorce. Adam Driver plays New York theatre director Charlie, while Scarlett Johansson plays Nicole, an actress who gave up Continue Reading
As the 76th edition of Venice commenced this week, the oldest film festival in the world has entered some choppy waters. First of all, there was a Hollywood Reporter article that slammed Venice as the “Fuck you” festival, essentially ignoring the #MeToo movement and the calls for gender representation which Continue Reading
For years the film industry has been releasing films for audiences that shock and scare. While horror films might be best released during the Halloween season, plenty of these films are now being released all year round. From classic films like Psycho to recent releases like Midsommar, there has been a Continue Reading
★★★★★ Joanna Hogg’s semi-autobiographical feature The Souvenir introduces Honor Swinton Byrne in a tour de force performance. It’s a stunning evocation of a young woman’s rite of passage in 1980s London, and a poignant exploration of an artist’s early foray into film. When Julie (Swinton Byrne), an earnest film student, falls Continue Reading
★★★★★ Contemporary British cinema has continued to surprise and amaze in recent years with the vast array of stunning directorial debuts. From the likes of Lady Macbeth to The Levelling, such first features have introduced adept directors and actors alike to the world. Emerging from the shadows into the limelight, Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Marking its 40-year anniversary, Alexandre O. Phillipe’s new documentary explores the cultural and mythic origins of the film once derided by Pauline Kael as evidence that there was no hope left for movies. Of Alien’s significance in the annals of horror cinema and its enduring appeal to audiences, there can Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Act with compassion; protect personal freedom; respect bodily autonomy; maintain beliefs consistent with science: accept human fallibility; privilege wisdom over the written word: these are the seven tenets set out by the Satanic Temple. What is perhaps most surprising about the tenets, apparently coming from the Prince of Darkness, is Continue Reading
★★★★★ When director Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) tells his estranged actor and friend Alberto (Asier Etxeandier), “It’s taken me thirty-two years to reconcile myself” with their final collaboration, what he’s really talking about is Pedro Almodóvar, director of the tender and affecting Pain and Glory, reconciling with the last forty five Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Fans of Game of Thrones will be used to seeing Carice van Houten as a sexually powerful witch whose actions frequently cross moral lines, but her new film in which she stars with Marwan Kenzari, last seen in Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin, is an altogether different affair. Written by Esther Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ A young girl is accused of a terrible crime and her family must come to terms with how much they really know about her in Stéphane Demoustier’s sober courtroom drama The Girl with a Bracelet, which premiered at Locarno. A family day at the beach can end in any Continue Reading
With Once Upon a Time in Hollywood enjoying rave reviews and the dubious status of – allegedly – being Quentin Tarantino’s penultimate movie, there is still no doubt that those who have never seen his films before are left with a lasting impression. From the off, his first offering Reservoir Continue Reading
★★★★★ Notorious is a masterclass of suspense, romance and technical craft. Featuring two of the most classic screen presences in Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, their on-screen chemistry plays into Hitch’s thematic obsession with desire. Kickstarting the BFI’s two-month-long retrospective on the Bristolian actor, and the film’s recent 4K restoration, Notorious Continue Reading