Film Reviews & More
★★★★☆ With Luca Guadagnino’s terrific Challengers, the acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name brings us the sub-genre we never knew we needed: the erotic tennis thriller.
★★☆☆☆ 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.
★★★☆☆ It’s 1969 and time has finally caught up with Indiana Jones. When he’s not napping in a bourbon-induced fug, he’s boring his students to sleep, counting down the hours to retirement. It seems that the days of the once legendary archaeologist’s adventures are behind him, until the daughter of an old friend arrives to drag the old man into one final hurrah.
★★☆☆☆ Following up his 2019 directorial debut Mallesham, Hyderabad-based director Raj Rachakonda returns to screens with a romantic drama that draws heavy inspiration from Brief Encounter, Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, and the Before Trilogy. 8 A.M. Metro is a sweet but ultimately shallow film whose final act ultimately finds depth and dimension too late to redeem its prior narrative shortcomings.
★★☆☆☆ All good things, they say, must end. Unfortunately for the DC Extended Universe, so too do the messy, mediocre and baffling. A basically entertaining, but flimsy and shallow object, The Flash may not be the final entry in this long-beleaguered franchise, but it might as well be.
★★★★☆ In the run-up to a regional hairdressing competition, the leading entrant is found mutilated. British director Thomas Hardiman’s debut film is a gripping, dizzyingly stylish thriller. With a tightly-woven plot, dazzling cinematography and a razor-sharp cast of characters, Medusa Deluxe is Brit neo-noir at its knotty best.
★★★★☆ 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.
★★☆☆☆ 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.
★★★★☆ Nam June Paik is commonly referred to as the “father of video art”. In her debut feature, director Amanda Kim chronicles Paik’s work from his early development in Berlin up to his eventual return to Korea in the 1980s.
★★★★★ During a summer break to a remote village in the Italian Alps, Pietro forges a lifelong friendship with the only other boy among the settlement’s dwindling population. Husband-wife team Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains is a gorgeously-told fable of platonic love.
