Film reviews and more
★★★☆☆ Fans of text adventures and the sadly defunct Telltale Games series can get their latest fill of branching narratives and choosing their own storyline courtesy of the new interactive sci-fi film, The Complex. “Here is a brand new idea […]
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 voices on the dispossessed. Through his Fontainhas trilogy (the aforementioned Ossos, In Vanda’s Room, and […]
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival returned to Bohemia this year with another feast of cinema from Europe and beyond. Running from 29 June to 7 July, this year’s festival was particularly notable for two excellent retrospective strands to complement […]
★★★★☆ Sandi Tan’s luminous and shape-shifting documentary Shirkers is a journey back in time through the 16mm reels and sinister true story of the long-lost indie movie of the same name that she shot in Singapore over 25 years ago. […]
★★★☆☆ Ideally, Disney would stop updating beloved cartoon classics into new live-action films, but as that seems unlikely, it’s lucky the Marc Forster-directed Christopher Robin has enough charm to get by. Over the past few years, Disney has doubled-down on the […]
“I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” Radu Jude’s film claimed the top prize at this year’s festival and it’s easy to understand why. It embraces the kind of boldly political stance of classic Polish […]
★★★★☆ Olmo Omerzu’s follow-up to the stinging satire of 2015’s Family Film is another tale of children left to their own devices by negligent parents, but this time takes the form of an unsentimental but winning road movie caper Winter Flies. […]
★★★☆☆ Unfolding entirely on a laptop screen, Timur Bekmambetov’s new thriller Profile seeks to explore the murky world of how social media is used to recruit vulnerable young women to ISIS. The results are as compelling as they are silly. […]
★★★★☆ Following 2015’s Aferim!, Radu Jude returns to the topic of historical Romanian anti-Semitism in his furious new satire “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” which picked up the top prize at the 53rd edition […]
This week sees the return of one of the highlights of the UK’s festival calendar in the form of Sheffield Doc/Fest, which runs from 7-12 June for its 2018 edition. As ever, the programme of over 200 documentary shorts and […]
★★★☆☆ Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Hot Docs 2017, Chris Kelly’s A Cambodian Spring is an intimate and upsetting account of community activism and the shaping of modern Cambodia. “This is a fake democracy,” says a resident of […]
★★★★☆ Despite being relatively light on political content, Ivan Passer’s Intimate Lighting – re-released on DVD and Blu-ray this week – was banned for twenty years under Soviet rule but has since become an enduring favourite of the Czech New […]
★★★☆☆ The always interesting Karel Roden is the MVP in Julius Ševčík’s A Prominent Patient, playing Czechoslovakian diplomat Jan Masaryk in this handsomely mounted Czech answer to a certain Oscar-winning Gary Oldman drama. This divergence comes in the very crux […]
The London Short Film Festival returned to the capital this month with another cornucopia of new and beloved shorts from around the world. Taking place from 12 – 21 January it gave UK audiences a chance to catch up with […]
★★☆☆☆ The Barden Bellas return to the spotlight in their third outing, an uneven European tour that wraps a nice bow around the group’s acca-xploits, but lacks what made the original special. They never expected to get this far. They […]
Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival returned to the Estonian capital for its 21st instalment from 17 November – 3 December. Unlike some other A-list European festivals, the chilly darkness provides the perfect excuse to settle in and enjoy a wealth […]
The Made in Prague Film Festival (10-19 November) is back in London over the next two weekends. Programmed by the Czech Cultural Centre, new films will be accompanied by the first ever UK retrospective of seminal Czech New Wave filmmaker […]
★★★★☆ Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos follows up 2015’s The Lobster with his second English-language feature. Starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is another dark comedy about the awful things we do to ourselves and […]