Alasdair Bayman

★★★★★ The cinema of Agnès Varda endures beyond time. Whether this is her first feature La Pointe Courte or the digitally playful The Gleaners & I, Varda’s cinema has always existed in its own unique space. After sadly passing away in March this year a month after her latest feature Varda by Agnès premiered at…

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★★★★☆ On Sunday evening the world witnessed one of the greatest games of cricket ever played. Central to this match was England’s harmoniously diverse squad made up of an Irish captain, a New Zealand born all-rounder and opening batsman born in South Africa. Yet, even as recent as 2015 at the Cricket World Cup, the…

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★★★★★ Few films have stood the test of time as well as Nicolas Roeg’s seminal horror Don’t Look Now. Revolving around the omnipresent theme of grief (and adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s short story), the film composes a ghostly melancholic reflection on this profound human emotion. Rereleased by StudioCanal into cinemas this week in 4K, the…

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★★★★★ From the first frame to its last, Apollo 11 observes the historic moon landings from a uniquely cinematic perspective. Paying homage to the analogue era by using exclusive footage from the time, transferred digitally from the original 65mm, Todd Douglas Miller’s third feature leaves you in a heady daze of wonder at humanity’s greatest…

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★★★☆☆ After breaking out onto the international film scene with A Fantastic Woman, Sebastian Lelio returns to cinemas with his second English language feature Gloria Bell. A remake of his native Chilean film Gloria, in which starred the ‘Meryl Streep of Latin American Cinema’, Paulina García, Lelio in this outing casts the mercurial Julianne Moore…

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★★★☆☆ Regardless if you care or not about fashion, it is impossible to ignore. From the somewhat delirious yearly coverage of the Met Gala to the eye-watering amounts of money involved in trade deals between fashion designers and big brands, the world we live in is consumed by it. The very genesis of these modern…

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★★★★☆ After exploding onto the international film scene with the Oscar-nominated Embrace of the Serpent, Ciro Guerra returns to cinemas with another story of Colombian tradition. His latest film, Birds of Passage, merges the western gangster genre with a spiritual epic tale on indigenous traditions, set against the drug trade in the 1970s. Accompanying him…

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★★★★☆ Over the course of his previous two features, S. Craig Zahler has carved a name for himself as a skilled director of deep character-based studies with added gore value. Though not as overtly provocative or aggravating as Quentin Tarantino, Zahler’s Dragged Across Concrete similarly submerges the audience in genre filmmaking, whilst resting at a…

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★★★☆☆ In the era-defining Trainspotting, Ewan McGregor’s Renton exclaims “It’s shit being Scottish.” As a fellow Scotsman, raised in England, this writer can confirm that it is indeed shit being Scottish. Still, this derogatory attitude towards one’s nationality pervades in a less explicit manner in Tom Harper’s third feature, Wild Rose. Written by Nicole Taylor,…

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★★★★☆ Unlike many book adaptations, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange stands equally apart and with Anthony Burgess’ original source material. Presenting Burgess’ unique world on-screen – importantly retaining his character’s Nadsat dialectic – Kubrick’s methodical attention to detail proved to be a harmonious match to the author’s prose. Committed to an unfiltered depiction of violence,…

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