★★★☆☆ A joint effort between Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, Bacurau is an acid western depicting a ragtag group fighting back against the outsiders who wish to do them harm. Picture Howard Hawks’ classic Rio Bravo, only the heroes are tripping out on ayahuasca. A blood-soaked anti-imperialist fable and Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Chinese director Diao Yi’nan’s first film in five years, The Wild Goose Lake is a gangster flick mainlining on pure fatalism and turns the tables on genre conventions and expectations. The result is an occasionally opaque but tremendously well-made melodrama. When mobster Zhou Zenong (Ge Hu) accidentally shoots down Continue Reading
★★★★★ Authentic being, leaps of faith and mortality haunt every frame of Terrence Malick’s latest opus, A Hidden Life (aka Radegund). Basing his new film on the life and death of WW2 conscientious objector, Franz Jägerstätter, the reclusive American auteur is unlikely to win over detractors, but true believers will Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Absurdity and surrealism played with a straight face is Quentin Dupieux’s stock in trade. His latest gonzo reverie Deerskin finds the filmmaker working with major stars Jean Dujardin and Adèle Haenel. The result is predictably crackpot and enigmatic. We meet Georges (Dujardin) driving down the motorway in a corduroy blazer. Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The El Duce Tapes is one of the best music docs to come along in a while. Funny, honest, grotesque and fascinated by a pot-bellied miscreant most would run a mile from, the film is a thought-provoking foray into anti-commercial art and outsider lifestyles. You might have seen Eldon Continue Reading
★★★★★ In Rose Plays Julie, the latest from dynamic duo Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, a child of adoption studying veterinary medicine decides to seek out her biological mother and father. Her journey of discovery and resolution in holding her parents to account makes for haunting viewing. With their regular Continue Reading
★★★★☆ In J.M. Coetzee’s acclaimed 1980 novel, waiting for the invading barbarians to show up is akin to waiting for Godot. Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s haunting adaptation shapes the book into a desolate cavalry western. Filmed in Morocco and Italy with an international cast, Mark Rylance leads Waiting for the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Alexandre O. Philippe continues his run of feature-length documentaries concentrated on classic genre movies, with a look at William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. Often described as “the Citizen Kane of horror”, this deep dive benefits from Friedkin serving as our personal guide. As a production, The Exorcist was virtually sui Continue Reading
★★★★★ Jaws didn’t just reel in millions at the global box office, it heralded the summer blockbuster era and turned Steven Spielberg into a superstar. Back on the big screen for a limited UK run, the director’s classy fish-themed thriller still wows. The making of Jaws was almost the undoing Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Bertrand Bonello’s arthouse horror oddity Zombi Child works best as a film about colonial trauma and the tragic history of Haiti. Those expecting a traditional zombie flick with flesh-eating ghouls clawing at the doors will soon learn this one is more Jacques Tourneur in style than a George A. Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ It’s time Cannes called a moratorium on screening the films of French director Arnaud Desplechin until he can come back with work as good as A Christmas Tale. Oh Mercy! has no business competing for the Palme d’Or. Co-written with Léa Mysius, who penned the equally dull Ismael’s Ghosts Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Going in cold, the Dardenne brothers appearing to tackle the subject of radical Islam and a vulnerable boy falling prey to its teachings might be construed as reactionary and misguided. In their skilled and compassionate hands, however, Young Ahmed is a riveting story of a boy in crisis. “A Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound serves as a history lesson and welcome tribute to a crucial element of moviemaking routinely ignored. Critics love to zero in on the relationship between directors and their stars, or directors and cinematographers, but rarely (if ever) the sound editor or ADR Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán’s The Cordillera of Dreams caps off an astonishing set of history-focused essay films, beginning with Nostalgia for the Light and continuing with The Pearl Button. The trilogy represents one of the great artistic statements of the decade. Closer to home geographically, personally and spiritually, than Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Expanding on her own 2009 short film, actor turned director Mati Diop returns to the timely subject of economic migrants from Africa braving the open ocean for a better life with Atlantics. Her feature-length debut is an enigmatic ghost story tackling worker exploitation. Atlantics begins like a common-or-garden social Continue Reading
