Film reviews and more
★★☆☆☆ Mid-way through Jacques Audiard’s criss-crossing critique of modern city life in Paris, 13th District, Émilie (Lucie Zhang) – out of work and in need of cash – is showing a prospective tenant around the apartment in which she lives. Part of the deal for this unsuspecting newcomer is that she will need to […]
★★★★★ A rich, autumnal gem of a film, Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman effortlessly blends reality with fairytale, past with present, to explore notions of loss, grief and acceptance. At just 72 minutes, it is short and sweet, but yet another exquisitely made, deeply moving feature from the French writer-director. The film opens with […]
★★★★☆ Lucile Hadžihalilović doesn’t make many films; Earwig being her third in almost twenty years. Yet in just three works, she has established herself as a filmmaker of uncompromising vision, the weird stories she tells focused on childhood, with strong elements of body horror. A film about a young girl with ice cubes for teeth, it’s […]
★★★★★ A visionary crossover of the theatrical and the cinematic, ear for eye demonstrates writer-director debbie tucker green’s remarkable creative versatility and clarity of expression. Hitting the big screens of the London Film Festival and small screens of the BBC simultaneously, this fervent, eloquent work articulates the shared experiences and personal history of […]
★★★★☆ Does a filmmaker use cinema as his or her own confessional booth or a darkened space in which to escape the harsh realities of the outside world? When the curtain closes and the lights go down on Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, it’s clear that this deeply autobiographical project is a vessel for both. […]
★★★★☆ Fabrice Du Welz’s sixth film Inexorable continues to explore his fascination with troubled souls. Here, it’s a young woman on a mission to destroy an author and his upper-class wife, for reasons which are kept tantalisingly opaque. Marcus Bellmer (Benoît Poelvoorde) is the writer of a hit novel. Married into old money, […]
★★★☆☆ As fuzzy and reassuring as a multi-coloured Pringle sweater-vest, The Phantom of the Open is a good, old-fashioned crowd-pleaser. Based on a true story, it stars Mark Rylance as Maurice Flitcroft, a Barrow-in-Furness crane-operator turned novice golfer, who – on multiple occasions – blagged his way into the British Open. Earning himself […]
★★★★☆ Adapting American author Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name for the big screen, Kiwi writer-director Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog is a meditative yet punishing, slow-burning exploration of man’s animal instincts. Montana, 1925. Sprawling and loosely episodic, the film maintains a chaptered structure, and we meet the brothers Burbank, Phil […]
★★★☆☆ Only viewers of a certain age will be familiar with the erratic sound of a dial-up modem firing into gear. It’s one of a whole host of pitch-perfect gags that litter new animation Ron’s Gone Wrong, a tender, frequently hilarious tale of unexpected friendships, growing self-assurance and analogue triumph in the digital age. […]
★★★★☆ After the large-scale brutality of political horror film New Order, Michel Franco returns with a low-key study in deceptive behaviour and enigmatic motives. Tim Roth headlines as a man attempting to escape his past and present, while on holiday in Mexico. Neil Bennett (Roth) is on holiday with Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and […]
★★☆☆☆ A nostalgic, blood and rain-splattered love letter to London and all that is and has ever been good, bad and decidedly ugly about the Big Smoke, Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho is, surprisingly, the director’s first film to appear at LFF. Constructed with his trademark panache, it is bold, bracing and […]
★★★★☆ Radio static crackles and emergency responders report a growing number of calls. What begins as a steady stream is soon a torrent; at the Queens hospital where she works, Dr. Nathalie Dougé notes that from one or two patients displaying symptoms of a new, unknown and unpredictable virus one week, it is […]
★★★★☆ From celebrated South Korean filmmaker Na Hong-Jin, The Medium is an occult shocker set in an isolated village in northern Thailand. A tropical (and therefore suitably febrile) take on the demonic possession and mockumentary/found-footage sub-genres, its creepy theatrics build to a freaky climax. Written and produced by the acclaimed director of The Chaser, The Yellow Sea […]
★★★★☆ A collision of ghosts past and future haunt the present in Pablo Larraín’s Spencer. By turns insidious and caustic, claustrophobic and free-wheeling, it is a nightmarish fairy-tale where little chance of a happily-ever-after exists. Exploring the powerlessness an exasperated Diana (Kristen Stewart) must confront when faced with Windsor tradition, expectation and hypocrisy, […]
Contrary to the doom and gloom in certain editorial circles, cinema is well and truly back. Ignoring the clickbait and released back into the wild, the BFI London Film Festival returns to – dare we say it – some sense of normality for 2021. Conscious that many cinema lovers would still prefer to […]
★★☆☆☆ “Your cock and your words fill me with joy.” Crass to the point of being offensive, these lyrics – from one song of the soundtrack to Gold for Dogs – effectively sum up this deplorable coming-of-age debut feature. Nonsensical and tonally misguided, we travel from France’s Atlantic coast to Paris and back, […]
★★★★☆ Set in a small village on the Czech-Austrian border, and spanning fifteen years pre, during and post-Second World War, Bohdan Sláma’s Shadow Country is a monumental piece of filmmaking. Simultaneously an historical allegory of tremendous scope and a claustrophobic, cautionary tale of collaboration and bloody revenge, it is both epic in scale […]
★★★★☆ Background noise cannot be ignored in Matt Fifer and Kieran Mulcare’s exceptional debut, Cicada. Aural triggers that recall repressed traumas are as vivid and immediate as smells or visual memories for Ben (Fifer) and Sam (Sheldon D. Brown). As they battle their individual pasts and the difficulties of a collective present, there is much […]