CineVue
For the latest reviews of arthouse, documentary and indie film in cinemas and on the festival circuit.
★★★★★ Andrew Kötting is a filmmaker and Professor of Time Based Media. A visual artist who uses film and photography to explore the gaps between dreams and reality, autobiography and self-mythology. It’s hard to put the multi-disciplinary Kötting’s work into a box, and yet he has made an entire film Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Fans of text adventures and the sadly defunct Telltale Games series can get their latest fill of branching narratives and choosing their own storyline courtesy of the new interactive sci-fi film, The Complex. “Here is a brand new idea in fiction – a story which ends in any one Continue Reading
★★★★☆ After his wife drowns in a tragic accident, Juha (Pekka Strang) enters a lengthy bout of depression, unable to connect with either his daughter, Elli (Ilhona Huhta), or his own feelings. A chance encounter with dominatrix Mona (Krista Kosonen) sets him on a new path of discovery. An erotic, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ It’s easy to think that our lives have become bottle episodes in recent weeks: single location stories cut off from the grand narrative of our ordinary lives and the usual onrush of world events, culture and sport included. Current uncertainty makes this hiatus feel like it’s stretching out to Continue Reading
★★★★☆ System Crasher is the outstanding feature film debut of German director Nora Fingscheidt. A tremendous slice of life filled with light and energy, which doesn’t shy away from the tough realities of what social care is like for children with severe developmental issues. Benni (Helena Zengel) is a foul-mouthed, rebellious Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve) is an ageing star of French cinema. Her self-aggrandising memoirs have just been published and her screenwriter daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche), along with her husband Hank (Ethan Hawke), return to Paris with their daughter to celebrate the occasion. One immediate consequence is the resignation of Fabienne’s Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ On paper the story of Marie Curie, a pioneering woman of science, seems like prime awards bait: with a big central role for Rosamund Pike, playing an eccentric proto-feminist. Sadly, Radioactive is as lifeless and inert as a rock, badly let down by a dismal script, and carrying all Continue Reading
★★★★★ It’s 1989 and convicted arsonist Amador (Amador Arias) has just been released from prison after setting forest fires in the Spanish countryside. Returning to his maternal home in the autonomous community of Galicia in northwest Spain, the quiet Amador tries to settle into the slowed quotidian rhythms of the 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
★★★★☆ “Violence,” – Douglas ‘The Arm’ muses – “is not always the work of hateful men. It’s just their way of making sense of the world”. Certainly, in director Nick Rowland’s astonishing, brutal feature debut, Calm with Horses, violence seems to be the only way of making sense of anything. Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ 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
★★★★★ In his third feature, Levan Akin makes traditional Georgian dance a boldly cinematic affair, combining the disciplined physicality of a dance film with the lingering gazes of a slow-burning love story. A perfect double bill for Portrait of a Lady on Fire, released last month, And Then We Danced Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ timely documentary on the Nobel Prize-winning novelist is a persuasive argument for rereading Morrison if you’ve already read her works – and if you haven’t, an imperative to get to it. If we’re not to be consumed by total despair in the era of Trump, it is Continue Reading
★★★★★ Portuguese director and cinéaste’s favourite Pedro Costa’s seventh feature – his first since 2014’s Horse Money – is a work of astonishing aesthetic beauty, made up of static compositions and use of chiaroscuro that recalls the Dutch masters. After premiering last year at the Locarno Film Festival, Vitalina Varela will 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