John Bleasdale

★★★★★ Steve James, Frederick Marx and Peter Gilbert’s seminal 1994 Hoop Dreams – making its UK Blu-ray debut this week – charts the aspirations and tribulations, the jump shots and the rebounds of two black American teenagers shooting for their own version of the American dream. William Gates and Arthur Agee Jr. are two high…

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★★★★☆ Documentary-making machine Alex Gibney (here joined by co-directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger) returns with a timely – perhaps too timely – postmortem on the American response to the Coronavirus pandemic, Totally Under Control. Right from the start, Gibney draws attention to the difficulty of making a documentary during a global pandemic. Cameras are…

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★★★★☆ A revelation on a bike ride in France leads to a rift between two childhood friends, but through thick and thin, uphill and downhill, friendship proves surprisingly and hearteningly durable in Michael Angelo Covino’s The Climb. Kyle (Kyle Marvin) and Mike (Michael Covino) are BFFs on holiday in France in the run-up to Kyle’s…

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★★★★★ Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, now celebrating its 30th anniversary, is the rock ‘n’ roll counterpoint to the grand operatic tragedy of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather saga. There are no auburn-tinted scenes of old men dying in fruit orchards or golden Sicilian sojourns here. Goodfellas is lit by the colours neon makes on oil-stained street puddles;…

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★★★☆☆ We’ve already had First Man and Apollo 11, but the renewed interest in the space race prompted by the lunar landings anniversary gets its weirdest entry yet with Elsa Kresmer and Levin Peter’s impressionistic documentary Space Dogs. There is a legend, Alexey Serebryakov’s voice tells us, a voice deep and rich in Steppes born…

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★★★★☆ Premiering in competition at last year’s Venice Film Festival, Václav Marhoul’s adaptation of Jerzy Kosińsk’s 1965 novel The Painted Bird is a gruelling odyssey through the bloody fields of Europe in the middle of the 20th century. Sometimes there are films that you feel people must-see – and mustn’t see at exactly the same…

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★★★☆☆ Shannon Murphy makes her feature debut with Babyteeth, a tragicomedy about a teenager facing terminal cancer. Teens dying young is a recurring theme, from Romeo + Juliet to The Fault in Our Stars. Milla (Eliza Scanlen) is one such case, a 15-year-old whose prospects look bleak but finds some solace in a relationship with drug…

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★★★☆☆ French director Olivier Assayas makes his Netflix debut with Wasp Network, a tale of spies, politics and refugees in a mid-1990s Cuba and Florida which is as undecided on its tone as it is on its politics. Rene Gonzalez (Edgar Ramirez) seems to have a perfect life. His wife Olga (Penélope Cruz) is beautiful,…

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★★★☆☆ Woody Allen returns with his 49th film, A Rainy Day in New York, as two young lovers decide to spend a couple of days in New York City – although scattered showers are expected. Stephen Sondheim once said that he couldn’t write a bad song. His boast meant that he had achieved a mastery…

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★★★★☆ Long before the era of breaking news and 24-hour rolling coverage, when Fox was just a twinkle in Rupert Murdoch’s eye and CNN had yet to unscroll its first Chiron, son of Russian Jewish immigrants Mike Wallace dominated the airwaves and the ratings. Going behind the headlines and losing the avuncular reassurance of a…

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