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Joseph Walsh

Film Review: Leave No Trace

★★★★★ Eight years on from Winter’s Bone, director Debra Granik offers up Leave No Trace starring Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie, an intricately crafted and haunting drama, based on the novel My Abandonment by Peter Rock. “Your socks burned you,”...

Film Review: Whitney

★★★★☆ One year on from the release of Nick Broomfield’s Whitney: Can I Be Me, Kevin MacDonald’s Whitney proves that there is always room for another documentary on the pop music icon. With access to close family and friends, MacDonald’s...

Film Review: Girl

★★★★★ Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont makes his directorial debut with Girl, a sympathetic and emotionally rich portrait of a 15-year-old girl, born in the body of a boy, who has aspirations of one day becoming a ballet dancer. Taking on...

Film Review: Arctic

★★★☆☆ With Arctic, Brazilian director Joe Penna’s debut feature offers audiences a conventional survival thriller of one man pitted against nature, which still manages to deliver the occasional moment of raw tension. Mads Mikkelsen stars as Overgård, a Danish explorer...

Cannes 2018: Rafiki review

★★★☆☆ The Kenyan government had already banned Wanuri Kahiu’s second feature, Rafiki, before it even premiered in Cannes. Telling the story of a pair of young women who fall in love only to be ostracised by their local community, the...

Film Review: Everybody Knows

★★★☆☆ Three years on from The Salesman, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi returns with his mystery-thriller Everybody Knows, boasting an attractive trio of Latin performances from Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darín and Penélope Cruz in a compelling drama concerning lost loves and family...

Film Review: Ready Player One

★★★☆☆ There are few directors other than Steven Spielberg that could direct a film like Ready Player One. Based on the novel by Ernest Cline, it’s a story that rides the current slipstream of nostalgia for 1980s pop culture as well...

Film Review: The Mercy

★★★☆☆ At first glance, James Marsh’s The Mercy looks like yet another overly polished, stiff upper lip, British biopic. But scratch beneath the surface of Marsh’s latest and you find something much darker and far more melancholic. The Mercy aptly...

Film Review: Darkest Hour

★★★☆☆ When British director Joe Wright made his feature debut back in 2005 with Pride and Prejudice, he showed he had something new to offer to period dramas. His shots were elegant tableaus, approached from unconventional angels, and the once...

Film Review: Paddington 2

★★★★☆ The bear from deepest, darkest Peru is back, now firmly established in his north London home of 32 Windsor Gardens with the Browns and ready for another adventure with Paddington 2. Paul King is once again at the helm,...

Film Review: The Silence of the Lambs

★★★★★ With an opening jogging sequence only rivalled by Jonathan Glazer’s Birth, Jonathan Demme’s chilling masterpiece The Silence of the Lambs still manages to send tingles down the spine 26 years on from its original theatrical release. It’s intriguing to...

Film Review: Thor: Ragnarok

★★★★☆ New Zealand director Taika Waititi brings his comic skills to the latest Marvel instalment Thor: Ragnarok – a gleefully rainbow-coloured romp that feels like a Saturday morning cartoon on a big budget, packed with the director’s brand of off-beat...