Joseph Walsh

★★★☆☆ 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 opens with a quote from Sir Edmund Hillary, “Men do not decide to become extraordinary,…

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★★★☆☆ 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 tired genre felt fresh once again. With his next feature, Atonement, he improved on his…

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★★★★☆ 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, as well as a few cast additions. The first Paddington was a joyful and somewhat…

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★★★★★ 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 revisit the film in light of the recent release of Mindhunter, which premiered on Netflix…

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★★★★☆ 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 humour.We begin with a laboured prologue explaining the film’s title, informing us that Asgard, the…

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★★☆☆☆ Filmmaker Tomas Leach offers up his sophomore feature The Lure, a sombre-toned study of an eccentric millionaire who hides $3 million of gold in the Rocky Mountains, luring thousands of fortune-seekers out on a wild goose chase in search of riches and redemption.Seven years ago, former art dealer Forrest Fenn decided to hide $3…

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★★★★☆ After a four-year hiatus Steven Soderbergh has returned to feature filmmaking with Logan Lucky – and what a return it is. Channing Tatum is Jimmy Logan, a devoted father struggling to cut a deal with his ex-wife (Katie Holmes) for custody of their daughter.Deciding to even the odds with his run of bad luck,…

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★★★★☆ Using Virginia Woolf’s short story A Haunted House as a primer, Sundance Film Festival alumni David Lowery returns with his third feature, A Ghost Story, in what is a visually arresting, poignant tale of loss and grief starring Casey Affleck and a superb Rooney Mara.With a pervading eerie quality, Lowery’s twist on a classic…

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★★☆☆☆ In his latest film, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, French director Luc Besson offers up a phantasmagorical sci-fi where the thrust is squarely focused on world-building and spectacle, but with scant attention paid to characters and plot.The film is based on a French comic series that Besson has been longing to…

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★★★★☆ There’s little doubt that the success of John Madden’s latest film, Miss Sloane, lays in the blisteringly chilly performance from Jessica Chastain as a Washington lobbyist who plays the political system like chess, happy to sacrifice anyone – even allies – in her wake.In the opening moments of the film she faces off against…

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