Film reviews and more
★★★★★ Pre-eminent Tibetan director Pema Tseden returns to screens with his latest, finally released in the UK after premiering at the Venice Film Festival two years ago. Balloon is a poetic, bleak, funny, and deeply humane portrait of life in […]
★★★★☆ Filmmaking partners Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen, known for their extensive documentary work on climbing and for their Reel Rock Film Tour films, set their sights on Marc-André Leclerc, a legend in the climbing world living in relative obscurity. […]
★★★★☆ In the midst of the Covid-19 lockdown, prolific director and cinephile Mark Cousins adapts his book of the same name into a visual study of the art of looking at the world. Cousins’ films are always personal, but underpinned […]
★★★★☆ Ten years ago, London’s National Gallery exhibited a heavily restored Salvator Mundi, allegedly painted by Leonardo da Vinci, the attribution of which is fiercely contested. Tracing the painting from discovery to its eventual record-breaking private sale, documentarian Andreas Koefoed’s […]
★★★★☆ In the months leading up to the UK’s departure from the European Union, troubled Kelly (the late Nika McGuigan) returns to her and her sister Lauren’s (Nora-Jane Noone) Northern Irish hometown after disappearing a year ago, unearthing a decades-old […]
★★★★☆ Degenerating health and the nearing horizon of mortality are handled sensitively in director Andy Kelleher’s lyrical debut fiction feature. Second Spring is a film about endurance and acceptance, tackling its subject matter with quiet poise where a lesser film might […]
★★★★☆ What would you get if you crossed John Wick with The Truffle Hunters? In his feature debut, American director Michael Sarnoski has the answer to a question that no one asked. As a result, Pig offers something strangely tender […]
★★☆☆☆ Following its premiere in Venice last year, Mexican director Michel Franco’s sixth feature receives its UK release this week. Depicting a fictional uprising in an unnamed Mexican city, New Order ably depicts the terror, confusion and violence of political […]
★★★★★ The shadow of far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who once compared the indigenous people of Brazil as animals living in a zoo and whose policies have accelerated the decimation of the Amazon rainforest, hangs over veteran documentarian Maya Da-Rin’s […]
★★★★☆ In 1971, 15-year-old Swede Björn Andrésen shot to fame after he was cast as the youthful Tadzio in Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice. Dubbed by Visconti as “the most beautiful boy in the world”, Andrésen became an overnight worldwide […]
★★★★☆ “This is the most important decision of my life”, single father John (James Norton) pleads to his social worker. “How will I know if I’ve got it right?” The decision in question, and the premise of Italian director Uberto […]
★★★★☆ A beautiful wide shot of a lush, rain soaked forest painted in deep greens and browns fills the frame. As the camera slowly pushes in, several figures emerge from the morass of leaves and vines: a man and his […]
★★★★☆ The murder of Tupac Shakur in 1996, and the subsequent killing of Biggie Smalls the following year, are so important to the history of hip hop – the former inspiring a thousand conspiracy theories – that it is fair […]
★★★★☆ Swedish director Magnus von Horn follows up his 2015 feature debut The Here After with Sweat, depicting three days in the life of an Instagram influencer. Structured in parts like a thriller, Sweat is truly most successful as a […]
★★★★☆ Ten years since his last film, renowned Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman makes a welcome return to the fore. At its premiere at Cannes, It Must Be Heaven was selected for the Palme d’Or, garnered a Special Jury Mention and […]
★★★★☆ Adapted from her 2018 short, Emma Seligman’s debut feature is a taut, stressful and brilliantly constructed chamber piece. Set during the first day of a shiva for a recently deceased family friend, Shiva Baby is ostensibly a comedy yet […]
★★★★★ Are any of old age’s trials as terrifying to contemplate or heart-breaking to witness as the gradual erosion of self that dementia wreaks? In his astonishingly assured debut feature, French playwright-turned-director Florian Zeller handles the mental decline of an […]
★★★★☆ Since 2008, writer-director Robert Machoian has built up an impressive and prolific body of work, largely comprised of shorts and documentaries and peppered with a handful of features. In his fourth feature, The Killing of Two Lovers, Machoian has […]
