Reviews
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Film Review: Wildfire
★★★★☆ In the months leading up to the UK’s departure from the European Union, troubled Kelly (the late Nika McGuigan) returns to her and her sister Lauren’s (Nora-Jane Noone) Northern Irish hometown after disappearing a year ago, unearthing a decades-old truth about the death of their mother. Broken borders abound in director Cathy Brady’s feature…
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Film Review: Annette
★★★★★ “Counterintuitive, baby,” Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard sing to each other early on in Leos Carax’s latest Annette – and indeed it is. As with every good musical, there’s a grasp of the magnificent ridiculousness of the whole conceit. A full joyful embrace of the freedom and the rigours of the form, “We’re scoffing…
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Film Review: Second Spring
★★★★☆ Degenerating health and the nearing horizon of mortality are handled sensitively in director Andy Kelleher’s lyrical debut fiction feature. Second Spring is a film about endurance and acceptance, tackling its subject matter with quiet poise where a lesser film might have fallen to mawkish sentiment. Archaeologist Kathy Deane, (Cathy Naden) is passionate, intelligent and attractive,…
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Film Review: The Nest
★★★★☆ Class in British society is omnipresent and can be felt walking down any street in the country. On the flip side Stateside, it operates on a different level with money helping create new risers and fallers in the system. Sean Durkin’s second feature after the well-received Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene, The Nest examines the…
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Film Review: Pig
★★★★☆ What would you get if you crossed John Wick with The Truffle Hunters? In his feature debut, American director Michael Sarnoski has the answer to a question that no one asked. As a result, Pig offers something strangely tender and even sometimes lyrical, wrapped up in the trappings of a noirish thriller that is…
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Film Review: Censor
★★★★★ David Cronenberg once said: “Censors tend to do what psychotics only do: they confuse reality with illusion.” Censor takes Dave Deprave’s theory for a creative spin, in doing so sending its lead, a female film examiner with a tragic past, down a rabbit hole of madness. If you’re expecting a retro pastiche akin to Grindhouse, with…
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Film Review: Sabaya
★★★★★ “Daesh [ISIS] feel they have the right to use sabaya girls as personal slaves. To rape them and sell them.” The horrors of life for Yazidi women inside the refugee camp of Al-Hol are laid bare in Kurdish-Swedish filmmaker Hogir Horiri’s devastating documentary, Sabaya. Almost numbed by the never-ending atrocities he has witnessed and…
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Film Review: WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn
★★★★☆ Premiering at SXSW back in March, Jed Rothstein‘s documentary narrates WeWork’s and its co-founder Adam Neumann’s complex journeys through the worlds of real estate, co-working and technology. Capturing Neumann’s fall from grace, this film illuminates some of the most hard-hitting professional and social anxieties of our age. Founded in 2010, the company’s name, made…
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Film Review: New Order
★★☆☆☆ Following its premiere in Venice last year, Mexican director Michel Franco’s sixth feature receives its UK release this week. Depicting a fictional uprising in an unnamed Mexican city, New Order ably depicts the terror, confusion and violence of political revolution, but stops short of offering meaningful context. Nestled amidst a wealthy suburb, young couple…
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Film Review: CODA
★★★☆☆ Ticking all of the small-town America coming-of-age drama bingo boxes, there’s a significant twist to the full house of Siân Heder’s CODA. Ruby Rossi, played by British actress Emilia Jones in a standout performance, doesn’t quite yet know who she is or what she wants from life. She wears baggy check shirts and a…