★★★☆☆ It’s possible that there’s more to life than meets the eye; that we survive physical death and live on in a secondary dimension. It’s also possible that there’s more to Personal Shopper than meets the eye, but faith – in both cases – may separate sturdy optimism from wishful Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ If the ongoing franchise juggernaut of J.K. Rowling’s magical fantasy is anything to go by, the world just can’t get enough of wizards. But who, you might ask, is looking out for the witches? Well, Anna Biller certainly is – writer and director of the deranged, kaleidoscopic comic horror Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ If you’ve ever been stuck in an airport lounge, motorway service station or transit hub hotel, you might feel a sceptical appreciation for Passengers, the latest film from director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters, The Imitation Game). Aboard an intergalactic shuttle, powered by the incredible star power of Michael Sheen, Jennifer Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Ah, the lighthouse: visual metaphor of masculine vanity, anti-shipwreck device, and home to a solitary lighthouse keeper, desperate for company to keep him from his own thoughts. Sound romantic and, perhaps, sigh-inducing to you? Maybe a good setting for a nice romance? Well such was the thought of M.L. Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Those who jones for Thrones are in luck – sort of. If Medieval intrigue is your thing, and you don’t mind a substitution of straight-up fantasy for historical fantasy, then your next dose of royal jockeying and primogenitive treachery is coming gift-wrapped in time for winter, thanks to StudioCanal’s Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ A long time ago, in a pre-Christian moral universe far far away, there were two brothers. One a Jewish prince, the other a Roman orphan. Their cultural differences could usher in a new era of toleration and understanding for their home town of Jerusalem, or it could lead them Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ It may not come as too much of a surprise to learn that David Brent can’t quite carry an entire feature film all on his own – but there’s humour enough in Life on the Road to justify the project, even if it falls considerably short of the ensemble Continue Reading
★★★★☆ If you’re in the business of selling dog food, you’ll know that dog owners are in the habit of projecting their own personality onto their precious pooches. What then, does a Wiener-Dog have to say about its owner? Hell, what does a dog resembling a frankfurter have to say Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ If you go out into the furthest reaches of Star Trek’s filmography you’ll be in for an unsettling discovery – the final frontier looks oddly familiar. It’s brightly coloured eye-bait, Jim, exactly as we know it – outpacing your visual field in an attempt to convince you that something Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The Weltanschauung of New York’s upper-middle intelligentsia is almost custom built for a good run- a-round comedy of manners. Rebecca Miller’s latest film, Maggie’s Plan, is one more addition to a considerable canon of light, loving satire that laughs at the pretensions and follies of the over-educated as they Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Edvard Munch’s paintings were critically savaged in his lifetime. His preference for personal expression over natural representation shocked an art world not yet ready to peer inside the mind of a man racked with dread and anxiety. This is the core message of Peter Watkins’ Edvard Munch – a Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ You may find yourself with a weak script, borrowing cultural currency from a song written over thirty years ago, shooting a film, in another part of the world, and you may ask yourself: ‘Well, why did they make this?’ In the case of A Hologram for the King, the Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ 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 Continue Reading
Marc Abraham’s career has known box office success as well as critical lionising, with films such as Children of Men and Spy Game standing out for attention on a resume which covers over twenty years in the business. Having made the transition from producer to director with 2008’s Flash of Continue Reading
★★★★☆ 2004 must seem like a long time ago for Don Cheadle – whose lead performance in that year’s Hotel Rwanda won wide acclaim for its humanity in a film portraying very knotty, harrowing matter. In recent years, his film work has mostly been limited to output from the Marvel Continue Reading
