CineVue
For the latest reviews of arthouse, documentary and indie film in cinemas and on the festival circuit.
★☆☆☆☆ The Greasy Strangler director Jim Hosking’s second feature, An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, tries to make a virtue out of extreme silliness and disjointed, oh-so-random plot points, but the end result is a desperately tiresome viewing experience. Do you like to, y’know, get silly? Like, putting on fright wigs Continue Reading
★★★★★ Mandy is only the second feature film from director Panos Cosmatos, but every moment of it pulses with a deranged lysergic energy that announces the arrival of a great individualist talent. Prolific is not – just yet, anyway – a word you can associate with the Italian-Canadian director Panos Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Intended as the first film in Sony Pictures’ wider Marvel Universe, the Tom Hardy-starring Venom is a desperately confused piece of work which has only a few compensatory pleasures to offer along the way. Not wishing to dish out another identikit offering of lycra-clad good guys and maniacal bad Continue Reading
Johanna St Michaels is a writer and director whose films Penthouse North (2014) and The Islands Amid The World (2011) explore the effects of time on people and places that slowly become neglected. Her latest film, The Inertia Variations (2017), is her most personal to date, taking as its subject Continue Reading
The French director François Ozon is no beginner when it comes to tackling eroticism on film. His output during the 2010s has included two explorations of female sexuality – 2013’s Young and Beautiful and 2014’s The New Girlfriend. Now he returns with a third, the erotic thriller L’Amant Double. We caught Continue Reading
Xavier Legrand is an actor and director whose Just Before Losing Everything was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. His first feature Custody, a powerful film which explores the anguish and anxiety caused by a violent father, won the Silver Lion at Venice last year. We Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ James Crump’s latest documentary explores the coterie of artists, models and writers who formed around the pioneering fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez. A passionate and romantic figure, Lopez makes for a dynamic subject in a film sadly lacking in narrative excitement. Working alongside his creative partner, Juan Eugene Ramos, Lopez Continue Reading
★★★★★ Swedish writer and director Ruben Östlund offers up another skin-crawling, hilarious study of the male ego battling against its own lack of self-awareness with The Square, winner of last year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure won great acclaim for its deliciously awkward portrayal Continue Reading
James Erskine is an accomplished director and documentarian who has explored a number of different sporting greats through the medium of film. His latest, The Ice King, tells the life story of John Curry: a pioneer in the world of figure skating, who redefined the sport by incorporating elements of Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The breakdown of a marriage is the stuff of many a taught, uncomfortable drama, and Loveless – the latest film from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev – offers a superbly icy portrait of a disintegrating relationship and the intolerable strain that places on the couple’s only child. Zvyagintsev’s previous film, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Starring Jessica Chastain as poker princess Molly Bloom, Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut Molly’s Game provides all the quick witted verve and punch you’d expect from the acclaimed screenwriter. The greatest successes of Aaron Sorkin’s screenwriting career – The Social Network and Moneyball – have something of a common thread: Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Set across three decades and two continents, Mountains May Depart is an affecting and ambitious tale of social upheaval in modern day China. The opening sequence of Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart shows an energetic young crowd bopping along in a dance class, fittingly enough, to ‘Go West’ by Continue Reading
★★★★★ Sophie Fiennes returns with yet another fascinating character study, blending slick concert footage with impromptu, intimate filming of musician and fashion icon Grace Jones as she darts between America, Europe and Jamaica – a force of vitality and glamour. Because there is no one else quite like Grace Jones, Continue Reading
★★★★☆ A young chef tries to booze and bang the pain away in director Peter Mackie Burns’ engaging, charming comic drama Daphne. Set in London, in a largely nocturnal landscape of fleeting pleasures and unacknowledged hurts, it makes for a timely study of young angst. Millennials are a sordid bunch, Continue Reading
★★★★★ David Lynch hasn’t embarked on a major film project since the release of Inland Empire back in 2006. Eleven years is a long time to wait for inspiration, but as is made clear in the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, he’s a patient man.After first enrolling at the Continue Reading