Film reviews and more
★★★★★ “The concept of resilience is a powerful one.” Channelling the fortitude and resolve with which his beloved city of Boston recovered from the 2013 marathon bombing, Mayor Marty Walsh’s words echo a key tenet of Frederick Wiseman’s City Hall. […]
★★★☆☆ Ostensibly a remake of David Michôd’s outstanding 2010 film Animal Kingdom, Jeanette Nordahl’s Wildland transposes the action of a Melbourne crime family’s nefarious enterprise to leafy Danish suburbia. Bringing both her experience as assistant director on the popular political […]
★★★☆☆ Whether you’re completely lost or simply taking the scenic route, coming-of-age stories tend to be just as much about the journey as their destination. Though it may not stray too far off a well-beaten track, Marley Morrison’s feature debut […]
★★★★☆ In the opening moments of Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh’s Gagarine, news footage from the early 1960s shows Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin opening an Ivry-sur-Seine housing estate, dedicated in his honour. Wide-eyed boys, chasing the stars, excitedly declare that […]
★★★☆☆ Open a film with a close-up of a young black man screaming “I can’t breathe,” his neck under the knee of a policeman, and you better back it up with a social critique worthy and respectful of as shocking […]
★★★☆☆ The glossy veneer of fame, fortune and respectability of a well-to-do family rapidly loses its shine in Bettina Oberli’s My Wonderful Wanda. A sinister-turned-bittersweet human drama told in three acts, chapter one begins as Wanda (Agnieszka Grochowska) arrives in […]
★★★☆☆ A loving ode to a pioneering, life-changing team, Steelers: The World’s First Gay Rugby Club is a courageous, invigorating account of struggles on, but mostly off the field of play. Formed in King’s Cross in the mid 1990s, the […]
★★★★☆ Murmur – a patient, probing, profoundly moving exploration of one woman’s battle against past demons and crippling loneliness – announces first-time writer-director Heather Young as a voice for the future. The Nova Scotian filmmaker’s debut feature demonstrates compassionate, composed […]
★★☆☆☆ The savage beauty of Finland’s northernmost reaches provides a stunning backdrop for Estonian director Veiko Õunpuu’s The Last Ones. Never coming close to matching the majesty of its surroundings, this misguided, tonally muddled frontier drama goes nowhere. Trouble above […]
★★★☆☆ With store-bought equipment, a woeful budget, cheap cars and cheaper apartments, the undercover lives of the Cuban Five could not have been further from the gadgetry and jet-setting high life of James Bond. Putting faces to the names of […]
★★★☆☆ Three female members of a family struggle with multi-generational secrets, trauma and the hardships of motherhood in Yang Lina’s Spring Tide. The Chinese filmmaker, whose past work lies predominantly in documentary, inspects the past, present and future of a […]
★★★☆☆ Bookended by visits to the same stretch of coastline under very different circumstances, Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen’s My Favorite War makes a perilous journey into her nation’s past through the eyes of an artist – or in her case journalist […]
★★★★☆ An isolated, run-down coal mine, enclosed by high-sided valley walls, is the forbidding, dystopian setting of Erdem Tepegöz’s impressive third feature, In the Shadows. Shackled not so much by the harshness of their physical surroundings, but unseen omnipotent forces […]
Following successful outings for CPH:DOX and the BFI London Film Festival in 2020, and digital editions of Sundance and Rotterdam taking place since the turn of the year, the 2021 Glasgow Film Festival follows suit in going online. Keen cinephiles […]
★★★★☆ The latest feature from Disney Animations Studios, whose recent revitalisation has brought us such hits as Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen, Zootropolis (or Zootopia in the US) is rollicking entertainment with a side of ripe social commentary. Ever since she […]
★★★☆☆ Labyrinth of Lies – Germany’s official Academy Award submission – takes place in the late 1950s, around ten years after the end of World War II, with Germany is in a state of repair and most of the population […]
Days after it was revealed that Hail, Caesar! and Anomalisa would act as bookends, opening and closing respectively, the full programme for this year’s Glasgow Film Festival (17-28 February) has been announced by co-directors Allan Hunter and Alison Gardner – […]
The joy of any film festival lies in the sheer breadth of cinematic dishes from which one can pick the tastiest morsels. These might be pictures that are never going to see the light of day in British cinemas, or […]