CineVue
For the latest reviews of arthouse, documentary and indie film in cinemas and on the festival circuit.
★★★☆☆ Autumn de Wilde’s debut feature – and the fourth big-screen version of Jane Austen’s novel Emma – is a handsome and witty if slightly uninspiring adaptation buoyed by a surfeit of game British acting talent and a quite delightful turn from rising star Anya Taylor-Joy. De Wilde’s film serves Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Japanese horror maestro Takashi Miike is back with this dive into comic book-style, hyper-violent crime noodling. First Love is not among the director’s best work – not by a long shot. Nevertheless, there’s enough of Miike’s trademark bonkers sensibilities to recommend this pulpy tale of crooked cops and warring Yakuza. Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Margot Robbie stars as Harley Quinn in Cathy Yan’s spin-off to 2016’s Suicide Squad. But where its predecessor was a mirthless, incoherent mess, Birds of Prey is a chaotic, violent multi-coloured joy; easily the best of DC’s extended universe films to date and the perfect vehicle for its star’s Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The quintessential American director is a hot topic for debate amongst most cinephiles. Whether it’s Welles, Reichardt or Scorsese, directors of this ilk possess a masterful skill in assessing pertinent themes throughout American’s past, present and future. Still, one director that cannot be ignored in a conversation of this Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love has long been held aloft by Adam Sandler advocates as proof of the 53-year-old’s acting chops. While years of shoddy comedies have undone some of that good work, A24 and Netflix thriller Uncut Gems is another sorely-needed reminder of his obvious talents. The latest film from Continue Reading
★★★★★ Arriving in UK cinemas cloaked in the Oscars buzz of a Best Picture and Best Director nomination, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is riding high in the expectations of cinema-goers. Conditions are almost ripe for a backlash, the sort of overhype that leaves some a little disappointed, but this just ain’t Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Mr. Jones isn’t just middlebrow – it’s the middle of the middlebrow: core-brow; nucleus-brow. Agnieszka Holland’s lengthy but invariably engaging new film concerns the real-life story of Welsh reporter Gareth Jones’ journey to Moscow and Ukraine in 1933 and his discovery there of the Holodomor – otherwise known as Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Music video director Melina Matsoukas brings her considerable talents to the big screen with Queen & Slim, a crime drama fitted out like Bonnie and Clyde but driven by the engine of contemporary racial politics. The gorgeous framing that characterises her earlier work serves this debut beautifully, while understated turns Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Industry commentators were somewhat taken aback by Kathy Bates’ Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role in Clint Eastwood’s latest “fact-based” drama, Richard Jewell. Not only was this seen as the sacrilegious nod that knocked Hustlers’ Jennifer Lopez out of the Oscar race, but it was also for a Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Back in 2015, Robert Eggers delighted critics with the flesh-pecking horror of The Witch, a directorial feature debut which blended the theatrics of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible with shades of M. Night Shyamalan and the more grizzly adaptations of Stephen King. Five years on and Eggers is back to Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Acclaimed satirist Armando Iannucci follows up the pitch-black delights of 2017’s The Death of Stalin with The Personal History of David Copperfield, a relatively conventional Charles Dickens adaptation embellished with occasional flashes of the Scotsman’s abrasive humour. This is – by this writer’s count at least – the eighth Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Shengze Zhu’s Present. Perfect. looks at the culture of live-streaming in China. Composed entirely of found footage and presented in black and white to lend visual consistency, the film raises important questions about the politics of viewership, the documentary form’s complex ties to reality and about human relationships in 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
★★☆☆☆ Actors playing other actors always feels like a dangerous act of appropriation. Geoffrey Rush in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, James Franco in James Dean and Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn, all feel like a claim is being made: “I can play them inside and Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Mikhaël Hers’ sensitive, heartfelt third feature Amanda is about loss and bereavement in the aftermath of a brutal terrorist attack in a Paris park. David (Vincent Lacoste), twenty-four, loses his sister Sandrine (Ophélia Kolb) and has to decide whether he can take on the care of her seven-year-old daughter, Amanda Continue Reading