Reviews
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Film Review: I Saw the Light
★★☆☆☆ To hear ’em sing with a heavy heart don’t half tear you up. What a shame then, that I Saw The Light delivers none of the emotional gut-punch that country music might claim as its chief contribution to popular song. The story of how Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston), with some help from his wife…
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Film Review: Florence Foster Jenkins
★★☆☆☆ The story of Florence Foster Jenkins is almost too strange to be true. A wealthy New York socialite and passionate patron of the arts, she founded and funded her very own opera club and insisted on being a performer as well an observer, and despite a serious lack of talent went on to sing…
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Film Review: Bad Neighbours 2
★★★☆☆ After the execrable filth that was Dirty Grandpa, Zac Efron – an actor with enough movie star wattage to light up an entire city – needed redemption. Fortunately, for him as much as us, he’s gone and found it in a New Bromantic comedy sequel to the unexpectedly delightful Bad Neighbours. The films are…
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Film Review: Arabian Nights: Volume Three
★★★★☆ All good things must come to an end. The Enchanted One is the last piece in the puzzle of Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights, a rambling odyssey through austerity-hit Portugal via Baghdad in the age of antiquity. Just as enigmatic and eclectic in terms of style, construct and tone as its preceding volumes, the finale…
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Film Review: A Flickering Truth
★★★★☆ Sifting through scrubland near an abandoned warehouse a man cradles the burnt remains of celluloid film stock and speaks of their destruction by the Taliban: “They burned the films. They killed them. They bled into the ground.” Like the lament of this eloquent subject, A Flickering Truth tells of the destruction of Afghan cinematic…
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Film Review: Ratchet & Clank
★★☆☆☆ Some 16 years ago, action-packed third-person videogame Ratchet & Clank blasted into the hearts and minds of many when it was released for the long-shelved PlayStation 2. It was inevitable that, at some point down the line, a film adaptation would be made – and here it is. Even ith many of the original…
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Film Review: Heaven Knows What
★★★☆☆ We all know that some people take heroin but for most of us it is what “those people” do, a practice beyond the fringes of mainstream society we engage with at a distance – if at all – through the press and stylised media representations. With their latest feature, Heaven Knows What, Josh and…
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Film Review: Hard Tide
★★☆☆☆ “Where you going to run? This is Margate!” yells the stocky Mr. Big of the over-familiar seaside crime thriller Hard Tide. This small town on the Kent coast seems an unlikely setting for nefarious doings but the film starts out as a convincing enough tale. Jake (Nathanael Wiseman) is a drug dealer and enforcer,…
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Film Review: Golden Years
★★★☆☆ If there’s one thing to be learned from the Hatton Garden robbery, it’s that OAPs are not to be underestimated when it comes to audacious heists. Golden Years is a light-hearted, entertaining crime romp that bounces around the high street banks of middle England at a geriatric shuffle. There are plenty of laughs and…
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Film Review: Captain America: Civil War
★★★☆☆ The Russo brothers return with Captain America: Civil War, pitting two of Marvel’s favourite sons against each other – but are you #TeamCap or #TeamIronman? Swathes of superheroes go at it and action abounds, but at the core of this film is not the light-hearted frolics of Joss Whedon’s Avengers outings. Instead, this is…