Festivals
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#LFF 2018: All the Gods in the Sky review
★★★★☆ Things have been quiet on the French Extremity front in recent times, but fear not! A director calling himself ‘Quarxx’ has brought the controversial brand of European cinema back with a cosmic-horror bang via new film All the Gods in the Sky. From its opening shots of a factory floor manufacturing sheet metal and the…
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#LFF 2018: The Nightshifter review
★★★☆☆ In Dennison Ramalho’s phantasmagorical morality tale The Nightshifter, a cuckolded coroner’s assistant with the ability to communicate with the recently departed takes revenge against his wife and her lover, in turn unleashing a living nightmare upon himself and his two kids. Stênio (Daniel de Oliveira) is an absent father and husband. In early scenes,…
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#LFF 2018: Happy New Year, Colin Burstead review
★★★★☆ Down Terrace director Ben Wheatley returns to the horror of kinship with Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (working title Colin You Anus), which received its world premiere at this year’s London Film Festival. The film stars Wheatley regular Neil Maskell – in a career-best performance – as the titular Colin/anus, an unremarkable everyman desperate to unite…
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2018 Filmfest Hamburg round-up
This year’s Filmfest Hamburg coincided with the city’s football derby. A fiercely contested match between the city’s two biggest clubs, the game was a fitting metaphor for a festival undergoing its own identity crisis. CineVue were in attendance, and we’ve run-down our five favourite films at the festival. It’s been seven years since the last…
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Toronto 2018: Green Book wins People’s Choice Award
After garnering rave reviews at Venice, Alfonso Cuarón’s luminously beautiful Roma arrived at the Toronto Film Festival to equal acclaim, but it was Barry Jenkins’ world premiere of If Beale Street Could Talk that garnered the most buzz on the ground. Widely considered the front-runner for the festival’s People’s Choice Award, If Beale Street Could…
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Toronto 2018: Wavelengths and shorts roundup
The focus of the Toronto Film Festival might be on the hundreds of features that grace the screens of the 10-day cinematic celebration, but the many shorts that are showcased at TIFF are also always worth checking out. Take a look at our round-up of the some of the best in show. The festival’s Wavelengths…
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Toronto 2018: Mid90s review
★★★★☆ Who would have thought that the foul-mouthed kid from Superbad would go on to direct one of the year’s best comedy-dramas? Yet here we are with Mid90s, Jonah Hill’s paean to youth, friendship and nostalgia. Shot in 1.33 : 1 aspect ratio and on super 16mm film, Hill faithfully replicates the look of the…
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Toronto 2018: Her Smell review
★★★★☆ Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss), the front woman of punk band Something She, is in trouble. The band once hit the big time, but Becky’s intolerably erratic behaviour has virtually crippled the group and threatens to destroy Becky. Told in five distinct acts, Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell is an intense study of self-destruction. Each…
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Toronto 2018: The Death and Life of John F. Donovan review
★☆☆☆☆ In 2006, 11-year-old Rupert Turner (Jacob Tremblay) strikes up a secret epistolary friendship with his TV star hero, John Donovan (Game of Thrones star Kit Harington), before he dies of an overdose, devastating the young boy. Eleven years later, he’s written a book of his experience, about which he is interviewed by a reluctant…
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Toronto 2018: American Dharma review
★★☆☆☆ Errol Morris tackles his most disturbing and slippery subject to date, Steve Bannon, in new documentary American Dharma. Morris paints a frighteningly apocalyptic figure, but in depicting Bannon as the kind of subject Satanic king-maker that he clearly admires, one wonders how much the tail is wagging the dog. Set in an abandoned hangar,…