Film Reviews & More
Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s “Abigail” mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless experience lacking creativity and wit.
★★★★☆ In Alex Garland’s Civil War, a group of journalists embark on a road trip to interview the US President amidst a second American Civil War, while exploring media’s dehumanizing relationship with violence.
★★★★☆ Having won the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, Cannes favourite and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with Monster, a masterful work of intricate storytelling, complemented by a lovely score by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto.
★★★★★ Theodor Adorno famously wrote that poetry was not possible after Auschwitz, but is cinema? Billy Wilder certainly thought so, getting footage from the camps as evidence as much as anything else. Steven Spielberg, Claude Lanzmann, Alain Resnais and Roberto Benigni have all with differing degrees of success tried their hands.
★★★★★ “All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots.” we are told early on in Noah Baumbach’s new film White Noise. Not since Alvy Singer bought Annie Hall all those books about death has there been such a funny and richly intelligent investigation of the particularly American anxiety about death.
★★☆☆☆ We all have directors that we don’t seem to get on with. We might admire their technical prowess or their commitment, but for some reason we just don’t click. For this critic, that’s the Dardenne brothers – Jean-Pierre and Luc – the Belgian filmmaking team that have brought a series of modern classics.
★★★★☆ With Lynch/Oz, renowned film studies documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe turns his attention to the celebrated, surrealist oeuvre of David Lynch: in particular, the director’s recurring fascination (arguably, obsession) with 1939’s MGM classic The Wizard of Oz.
Returning for its 26th edition and with 2021’s Covid restrictions largely a thing of the past, Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) this year crowned Hilmar Oddsson’s Icelandic dark comedy Driving Mum as the 2022 Grand Prix winner, with the Best Director award going to Ahmad Bahrami for thriller The Wastetown.
★★★★☆ A chance encounter between a pharmacist and a footballer opens up a world of magic and romance in Aleksandre Koberidze’s second feature, an endlessly enchanting fable from the Georgian director. Its story and emotions are as universal and quotidian as they come.
Coming from a background in photography and cinematography, Alejandro Loayza Grisi embarked on his directorial career with Utama, the tale of an elderly Quechua couple wrangling llamas in the Bolivian highlands.
★★★★☆ Alejando Loayza Grisi’s award-winning debut feature, Utama is an understated but spectacularly mounted drama about an ageing Quechua couple tending llamas on the edge of civilisation. They live in a very modest stone house that looks out onto the Bolivian altiplano.
★★★☆☆ Maria Schrader’s She Said goes behind the scenes of how The New York Times journalists led the charge in bringing down Harvey Weinstein. One of the most successful film producers of all time, he was also a sexual predator who used his wealth, privilege and power to destroy the lives of countless women.