★★★★☆ The first of a two-parter, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is bigger, bolder and grander than its predecessor, and with little serious competition from Marvel or DC’s live-action factories, looks set to be the best superhero film of the year.
★★★☆☆ A man sits alone in a room with a notepad and begins to scribble down his own voiceover. He only writes on one page and seems to always be starting at the top. His thoughts will be meticulous and he will show a certain expertise. When he’s finished writing he will place the pen on the table, neatly aligned with the pad.
★★☆☆☆ Bereavement, mental health, the threadbare US social welfare system and homelessness are the heavy topics that British-born director Deborah Richards tackles in her debut feature. Unfortunately, their worthy but superficial and somewhat incoherent presentation means that Move Me No Mountain is an emotionally and thematically inert experience.
★★★★☆ Danish director Eva Mulvad and co-director Lea Glob turn their attention to an Iranian family caught up in international bureaucracy as they flee from persecution and the threat of execution in Love Child. Never has the banality of the...
★★★★☆ Only Roy Andersson would call a 78-minute film About Endlessness. It is of a piece with his droll Swedish wit, a universe drawn with fastidious precision and painted in a palette of greys, drab greens, beiges and browns. Made...
★★★★★ Steve James, Frederick Marx and Peter Gilbert’s seminal 1994 Hoop Dreams – making its UK Blu-ray debut this week – charts the aspirations and tribulations, the jump shots and the rebounds of two black American teenagers shooting for their...
★★★☆☆ 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...
★★★★☆ 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...
★★★★☆ 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,...
★★★☆☆ 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...
★★★★☆ “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...
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...
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...
★★★★☆ 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...
★★★★☆ 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...