Cinema in the Time of Corona: Watching the latest releases at home
With cinemas closed, major releases postponed, and current productions in limbo, this is a dark time for filmmaking. It’s horrible to imagine that after months […]
Film Review: Dogs Don’t Wear Pants
★★★★☆ After his wife drowns in a tragic accident, Juha (Pekka Strang) enters a lengthy bout of depression, unable to connect with either his daughter, […]
Film Review: Vivarium
★★★★☆ It’s easy to think that our lives have become bottle episodes in recent weeks: single location stories cut off from the grand narrative of […]
Film Review: System Crasher
★★★★☆ System Crasher is the outstanding feature film debut of German director Nora Fingscheidt. A tremendous slice of life filled with light and energy, which doesn’t […]
CPH:DOX 2020: The Fight for Greenland review
★★★☆☆ The opening film of this year’s hastily – and impressively – digitised CPH:DOX festival, Kenneth Sorento’s The Fight for Greenland offers a balanced, clear-eyed […]
Hollywood’s holy box office trinity
Hollywood certainly knows how to churn out a blockbuster or three. There are now nearly 50 movies that have generated over a billion dollars in […]
Film Review: The Truth
★★★☆☆ Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve) is an ageing star of French cinema. Her self-aggrandising memoirs have just been published and her screenwriter daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche), […]
Film Review: Radioactive
★★☆☆☆ On paper the story of Marie Curie, a pioneering woman of science, seems like prime awards bait: with a big central role for Rosamund […]
Film Review: Fire Will Come
★★★★★ It’s 1989 and convicted arsonist Amador (Amador Arias) has just been released from prison after setting forest fires in the Spanish countryside. Returning to […]
CPH:DOX 2020: Digital programme preview
With the Cannes Film Festival now postponing its 2020 edition in light of the global Covid-19 epidemic until late June at the earliest, and other […]
Cryptocurrency: The future of Hollywood?
It’s hardly surprising that Hollywood has embraced cryptocurrencies. The rich and famous are always looking for safe and profitable places to invest their earnings, while […]
Cinema Made in Italy 2020 highlights
Celebrating its tenth anniversary, Cinema Made in Italy returned to London this month to showcase a surfeit of contemporary Italian cinema. New films were screened […]
Film Review: Calm with Horses
★★★★☆ “Violence,” – Douglas ‘The Arm’ muses – “is not always the work of hateful men. It’s just their way of making sense of the […]
Film Review: Bacurau
★★★☆☆ A joint effort between Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, Bacurau is an acid western depicting a ragtag group fighting back against the outsiders […]
Film Review: And Then We Danced
★★★★★ In his third feature, Levan Akin makes traditional Georgian dance a boldly cinematic affair, combining the disciplined physicality of a dance film with the […]
Interview: Pedro Costa, dir. Vitalina Varela
Since his 1997 feature Ossos began his work with the disadvantaged communities of Fontainhas in Lisbon, Pedro Costa has become one of cinema’s most singular […]
Film Review: Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
★★★★☆ Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ timely documentary on the Nobel Prize-winning novelist is a persuasive argument for rereading Morrison if you’ve already read her works – and […]
Film Review: Vitalina Varela
★★★★★ Portuguese director and cinéaste’s favourite Pedro Costa’s seventh feature – his first since 2014’s Horse Money – is a work of astonishing aesthetic beauty, made […]