Film reviews and more
★★★★★ When we hear the word ‘schizophrenia’, we may think of crazed killers or of squalid institutions in which wriggling madmen are tortured into compliance by maniacal doctors. Craig Roberts’ Eternal Beauty, a lively, textured and personal story of the origins and experience of paranoid schizophrenia, is a wonderful corrective to such misconceptions. Jilted at the altar, Jane develops a debilitating […]
★★★★☆ Multi-award-winning Brazilian drama Sócrates tells the troubled story of a bereaved gay teenager barely surviving in a São Paulo slum. Directed with quiet restraint and featuring a central performance of startling depth and candour, this movie is a slow-burning story of loss and solitude which is also resonant with humanity, dignity, and hope. The film starts abruptly with […]
★★★★☆ Baron Ronald Reisinger lives a life of indulgence, flaunting his status and dining in style on an ocean liner. Yet he is curiously solitary. King of the Cruise, the latest film from Dutch documentarian Sophie Dros, is at once a singular portrait of defanged nobility and a complex, patient exploration of loneliness. Anyone who has ever poured a […]
★★★★☆ Packed with raw, prickly emotion and featuring a terrific debut performance by Frankie Box, writer-director Eva Riley’s first feature Perfect 10 is an acutely observed and beautifully shot coming-of-age story. It is also a tender, fastidiously constructed portrait of working-class girlhood that shimmers with angst, vulnerability, and compassion. Leigh (Box) is a talented young gymnast struggling with poverty, […]
★★★★★ By turns tragic, infuriating, enlightening, and moving, The Fight follows four civil rights cases brought against the Trump administration by the ACLU. This extraordinary documentary film from the directorial team behind 2016 hit Weiner shows us in vivid, vital detail what is really at stake in Donald Trump’s historic assault on civil rights. The Fight has a straightforward, […]
