CineVue
For the latest reviews of arthouse, documentary and indie film in cinemas and on the festival circuit.
★★★★★ 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
★★★★☆ 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
★★☆☆☆ 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
★★★★☆ “Fuck off, Hitler!” The spirit of Taika Waititi’s satirical comedy is certainly clear in its demands for the monster supreme of national socialism to kindly do one. While the spectre of global fascism seems to once again be rearing its head, Waititi finds a way to turn his unique Continue Reading
★★★★☆ “The difference between film and memory is that films are always false”, muses protagonist Luo Hongwu (Huang Jue) early on in Long Day’s Journey into Night. If what we see, like Hongwu’s own perspective, is unreliable, and if we can’t even trust the narrator of the story, then how Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ Rey (Daisy Ridley) is continuing her force training, now under the tutelage of Leia (a disturbingly reanimated Carrie Fisher). Meanwhile, we are told that Supreme Leader Kylo Ren is consumed with a quest to find the ultimate evil in the galaxy. Forty years and nine episodes in the making, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Alex Gibney returns with this gripping study of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch-turned-activist who was sentenced to nine years in prison after challenging Vladimir Putin. Power corrupts, the saying goes, but in Gibney’s new documentary, ultimate power – or at least the kind wielded by the once-richest man in Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Following his 2017 documentary Last Men in Aleppo, Feras Fayyad returns to the humanitarian crisis in Syria, this time in the besieged city of Ghouta and its underground hospital, known as “The Cave”. Under siege for five years until 2018, Fayyad’s haunting documentary follows hospital manager Amani Ballour and Continue Reading
★★★★★ Among the greatest living filmmakers in the world, Martin Scorsese has defined American cinema for a generation. His work has encompassed family melodrama, historical fiction, comedies, musicals, and psychological thrillers, but it is his concern with crime that has defined his career. In The Irishman, the master director has Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Turning the traditional story of Punch and Judy on its head with a joyously feminist reinterpretation, debut writer and director Mirrah Foulkes offers an accomplished delight with Judy & Punch. Set in the anarchic and outlandish town of Seaside – which, ironically, is located nowhere near the coast – Continue Reading
As the nights have drawn in over the last couple of months, the crop of home video release have been especially abundant. Criterion’s release of The Naked Kiss on 2nd September was the first of a number of Samuel Fuller titles – a suburban noir baked in sexual hypocrisy, misogyny Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Now into his sixth decade as a director, Ken Loach has followed up the Palme D’Or-winning I, Daniel Blake with another hard-hitting work of social realism. Teaming up once more with regular screenwriter Paul Laverty, Sorry We Missed You offers a scathing assessment of zero-hour contracts and the damaging Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Films about filmmaking are nothing new. From Truffaut’s visionary Day for Night to The Disaster Artist, film adores observing the magic of moviemaking. However, a lesser-explored area of filmmaking is the depiction of disability and specifically neurofibromatosis on screen. Aaron Schimberg’s second feature, Chained for Life, hones in on Continue Reading
★★★★☆ A delve into the relatively short life of charismatic INXS frontman Michael Hutchence somehow feels long overdue. Perhaps because he was foremost a fascinating figure in rock, whose mystique and allure was sadly upended with the constant press intrusions when he became prime tabloid fodder before his untimely demise, Continue Reading
By