Film Review: Shirley
★★★☆☆ From a script by Sarah Gubbin – who adapted a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell – whose story was based on the prolific horror author Shirley Jackson – Josephine Decker’s fourth feature is (to say the least) a multi-layered […]
Film Review: Relic
★★★★☆ The slow rot of psychological decay is brought into the physical realm with creeping, insidious stealth by Natalia Erika James in her highly assured, thought-provoking feature debut, Relic. Re-framing more traditional genre choices for representing dementia, the Japanese-Australian filmmaker has […]
Film Review: The Painter and the Thief
★★★★☆ Again proving that great strength can be drawn from laying bare perceived weakness, Norwegian filmmaker Benjamin Ree’s The Painter and the Thief is an art heist film like no other and an arresting documentary of startling, often brutal, emotional honesty. His 2016 debut, Magnus, […]
Film Review: Mogul Mowgli
★★★☆☆ Riz Ahmed battles questions of cultural and religious identity, familial expectation, self and health in order to find his calling, and to find his way home, in Mogul Mowgli. Knowing where you’re going cannot be known without knowing where you’ve […]
Film Review: African Apocalypse
★★★★☆ “You’d never know what’s underneath, unless someone told you.” History books, lectures and internet searches cannot possibly substitute hearing first-hand the effects of Europe’s colonialist past on one of the most impoverished countries in the world. In Rob Lemkin’s […]
The worst film characters to meet in a casino
Casinos are great settings for movies. They hold the promise of high-stakes action, life-changing decisions, moral dilemmas, and an ever-present element of risk and danger, all in a glamorous setting with plenty of complex, flawed, and fascinating characters. It’s no […]
The five best casinos of the James Bond franchise
When we think of James Bond, our minds begin to fill with images of fast cars, beautiful women, glamourous locations, and danger. But this isn’t all the legendary spy is famous for and many of us will think ‘casino’ when […]
Film Review: Wolfwalkers
★★★★☆ Adding yet another jewel to their burgeoning crown, Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon’s latest film, Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart’s Wolfwalkers, is a triumphant blend of mythology and history, of soaring imagination and cruel reality. It is the enchanting […]
Film Review: Totally Under Control
★★★★☆ Documentary-making machine Alex Gibney (here joined by co-directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger) returns with a timely – perhaps too timely – postmortem on the American response to the Coronavirus pandemic, Totally Under Control. Right from the start, Gibney […]
Film Review: Summer of ’85
★★★★☆ François Ozon returns to screens with Summer of ’85, based on Aidan Chambers’ novel Dance on My Grave. A sumptuously shot, nostalgic bildungsroman framed by a bitttersweet darkness, the film deploys many well-worn tropes of the coming of age […]
Film Review: One Man and His Shoes
★★★★☆ “How much do you get paid, just to wear these shoes?” David Letterman’s question to Michael Jordan is met with shrieks of delight from his studio audience. The soon-to-be global superstar bashfully responds, “A lot,” grinning from ear to ear. […]
Film Review: The Climb
★★★★☆ A revelation on a bike ride in France leads to a rift between two childhood friends, but through thick and thin, uphill and downhill, friendship proves surprisingly and hearteningly durable in Michael Angelo Covino’s The Climb. Kyle (Kyle Marvin) […]
Film Review: Cinema Paradiso
★★★★☆ A major contributor to the reverential narrative of wistful cinema, Giuseppe Tornatore’s magnum opus Cinema Paradiso is an elegant distillation of the form’s escapist qualities and the garland of an industry that understands global audiences’ enduring appetite for wild […]
How cinema speaks to the other arts
It’s often been said that birds of a feather, flock together. That might not always be true when it comes to business but the entertainment industry worldwide is an exception to the status quo. Cinema, mostly made in Hollywood with […]
Film Review: I Am Greta
★★☆☆☆ In 2018, a quiet 15 year-old girl from Sweden began protesting the climate crisis by striking from school. Amidst global disquiet and political inertia, Greta Thunberg rapidly became the face of contemporary climate activism. In his directorial debut, Nathan […]
Film Review: The Other Lamb
★★★★☆ This year’s surfeit of films about cults hits its stride with Malgorzata Szumowska’s first English-language picture. A visceral, Atwoodian journey, The Other Lamb is as much an examination of narcissism and the existing structures of gendered power as it […]
Film Review: Carmilla
★★☆☆☆ Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla is among the most influential horror stories ever written. Director Emily Harris’ de-fanged adaptation follows plenty of other versions of the novella, zeroing in on the ‘lesbian vampire’ aspect, but the result is deathly dull. […]
Film Review: Being a Human Person
★★★★☆ Charting the production of Roy Andersson’s latest and possibly final film, About Endlessness, documentarian Fred Scott explores in his first feature the career of one of Sweden’s most beloved and singular filmmakers. The result is an affectionate and often […]