★★★★☆ Slipping under the radar at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, The County was nevertheless a hit with those who sought it out. Released on Curzon Home Cinema this week, this western-tinged, visceral Icelandic drama deserves as large an audience as possible. Despite the obvious Icelandic setting of Grímur Hákonarson’s (Rams) third Continue Reading
★★★★☆ In his follow-up to The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Mark Cousins takes us on a “new road movie through cinema”, a 14-hour virtual film school made up entirely of the all-too-often forgotten links: masterful films directed by women. Please note that this is a review of the complete Continue Reading
★★★★☆ In the years since Juno offered a light-hearted but even-handed take on the subject of unwanted teen pregnancy, the discourse around reproductive rights in America has, if anything, grown more polarised. Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a subtle, quietly devastating look at how a young woman’s body Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu’s seventh feature (and second out this month in the UK, the other being documentary Infinite Football), is a stylish and fitfully engaging crime thriller with a great concept, let down by incoherent plotting and impenetrable characterisation. Cristi (Vlad Ivanov), a middle-aged cop working for the Continue Reading
★★★★☆ A Romanian pen pusher’s attempts to revolutionise the beautiful game goes far beyond inverting the pyramid in Corneliu Porumboiu’s hilarious Infinite Football, a semi-follow-up to The Second Game. The introduction of rules to the game of football gave it a shared language and helped turn it into a spectator Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ In her directorial debut Romantic Comedy, British musician and actor Elizabeth Sankey examines the history of one of cinema’s greatest and most enduring genres. Sadly, a love of romantic comedies and a sharp approach to editing are not enough to buoy up this hopelessly shallow documentary. Opening on a Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Camino Skies tracks six pilgrims from New Zealand and Australia as they embark on the historic five hundred mile pilgrimage that winds across Spain to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The gruelling pilgrimage – known in English as the Way of St. James – across the Continue Reading
★★★★★ When Pablo Larraín took the helm of Jackie, it was the first time the Chilean director had attempted two things: a story set outside of Latin America and one with a female protagonist. With Ema, Larraín is back in his home country, weaving a tightly-controlled narrative of family and Continue Reading
★★★★☆ At an age when, for most, a trip to the bathroom would count as the most strenuous task of the day, ex-pat champion of authentic Mexican cuisine Diana Kennedy is still excitedly on the hunt for that most elusive and unforgettable of tamales recipes. Something of a national treasure Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Australian director Kitty Green’s fourth feature may be her first fiction film – after documentaries Casting JonBenet, Ukraine is Not A Brothel and The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul – but it is undoubtedly rooted in reality. Quietly raging, The Assistant is a bleakly precise study of complicity in workplace abuse. Movie producer Continue Reading
★★★★☆ In the grip of apartheid and the long-running border war with Namibia (then South West Africa), the South African regime forces all white boys over the age of 16 to perform national service. South African writer-director Oliver Hermanus adapts André Carl van der Merwe’s novel about a closeted gay Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Richard Dreyfuss stars in Astronaut, Shelagh McLeod feature film debut, in which she also doubles up as screenwriter. It’s a low-key affair that made its World Premiere at last year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. In many ways, it has the look and feel of a TV drama, which is Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The reverberations of loss in a small town awaken the spirits of the recently deceased in Denis Côté’s chilling adaptation of Laurence Olivier’s Répertoire des villes disparues. Occupying a peculiar space between life and death, arthouse and genre, Ghost Town Anthology isn’t a horror story exactly, but a portrait Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ New York hip hop antagonists Beastie Boys are a group who have often defied the very notion of pigeon-holing, blending elements of rap, punk and a myriad of samples into their own unique sound. So it feels somewhat fitting that any documentary on the trio should do the same. Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Matvey (Alexksandr Kuznetsov) waits at the front door of his girlfriend’s father’s apartment, priming himself for the bloody task ahead of him. Priming himself, he utters the mantra, “evil won’t touch me”. It may not touch him, but over the next 100 minutes of this hyper-violent comic thriller, it Continue Reading
