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John Bleasdale

Film Review: The Truth

★★★☆☆ Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve) is an ageing star of French cinema. Her self-aggrandising memoirs have just been published and her screenwriter daughter Lumir (Juliette...

Film Review: Midnight Family

★★★★☆ An acutely observed and frequently heartbreaking documentary, Luke Lorentzen’s Midnight Family chronicles one family’s privately run ambulance, saving lives and attempting to break-even...

Film Review: Seberg

★★☆☆☆ Actors playing other actors always feels like a dangerous act of appropriation. Geoffrey Rush in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, James...

Film Review: Joker

★★★★★ Joaquin Phoenix gives an Oscar-worthy performance as the Clown Prince of Crime in Todd Phillips’ unique take on the Batman supervillain Joker, which...

Venice 2019: Joker has last laugh with Golden Lion win

In what has to be one of the crazier award ceremonies to grace the Venice Lido on its 76th edition, Todd Phillips’ Joker took home this year’s Golden Lion in a move guaranteed to provoke a flood of hot takes, an avalanche of think pieces and further lubrication for Oscars season.

Venice 2019: Saturday Fiction review

★★★★☆ Suzhou River director Lou Ye’s wartime espionage thriller Saturday Fiction starts as a mysterious murky mess and resolves itself into a bullet-riddled noir. We first meet Jean Yu (Gong Li) in Shanghai circa 1937 as she is rehearsing a play with director/lead actor Tan Na (Mark Chao).

Venice 2019: The Domain review

★★★★☆ Tiago Guedes’ latest offering The Domain dissects a wealthy Portuguese family in the second half of the 20th century as a libertarian young patriarch struggles with duty, family, politics and his own personal destructive freedom.