Cannes 2021: Hit the Road review
★★★★★ A family car journey isn’t always an enticing premise – either for a film or in real life. But in Panah Panahi’s feature debut Hit the Road, the ride is one that both the audience and the family featured […]
Cannes 2021: Everything Went Fine review
★★★☆☆ A bland title – much like a bland line of conversation – can hide an abyss the way a household fridge can hide a corpse. François Ozon is a master at this kind of observational understatement that touches on […]
Film Review: Martin Eden
★★★★☆ There’s only one thing sadder than the fate of a failed writer and that’s the fate of a successful writer. At least, that’s the lesson this reviewer took home from Pietro Marcello’s bold interpretation of Jack London’s Martin Eden. […]
Cannes 2021: Our picks of the festival
There’s never been a Cannes quite like this. Vaccine passports, saliva COVID tests, facemasks: welcome to the Croisette in the time of coronavirus. Cannes has returned, following a year long deferral. Spike Lee is once more head of the jury […]
Film Review: Frankie
★★☆☆☆ A family assemble for a vacation in Portugal and to confront a looming loss in Ira Sachs’ gentle talkathon, Frankie. The film takes place in the Portuguese city of Sinta, a beautiful location, and a family of disparate elements have […]
Film Review: The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet
★★★★★ It seems ridiculous to call a film that is only 73-minutes long an epic, but that is what The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet feels like. Though it should be made clear, by epic there’s nothing grandiose; there is […]
Film Review: Army of the Dead
★★★☆☆ Is there currently a more divisive director than Zack Snyder? On one side there are the legions of fans and hashtag warriors for who he is a messianic figure of unsurpassed vision. Facing them, the hordes who find his […]
IFFR 2021: Madalena review
★★★☆☆ In a small rural town in the middle of acres and acres of soy fields, bodies keep turning up. The latest is the body of a trans woman Madalena (Chloe Milan). The lives of three people seem obscurely affected […]
IFFR 2021: Liborio review
★★★★☆ It’s the beginning of the 20th century, and Olivorio Mateo (Vicente Santos) is a peasant who disappears in the midst of a storm. In the darkness of a cave, he almost gives up hope but manages to escape in […]
IFFR 2021: Gritt review
★★★★☆ Itonje Søimer Guttormsen’s Gritt is a funny, maddening and at times touching work about art, ambition and how to live. The titular Gritt (Birgitte Larsen) is a familiar figure, both in real life and in culture: the artistic meanderer […]
IFFR 2021: Black Medusa review
★★★☆☆ Nada (played with resolute sternness by Nour Hajri) is a young woman who leads a double life. By day she works for an online company; at night she scours the bars and clubs of Tunis for men who want […]
Film Review: The Capote Tapes
★★★☆☆ Cinema has a love/hate relationship with Truman Capote. On the evidence of The Capote Tapes, almost everyone did. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – a slim novella a cigarette holder away from plagiarising Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin – was made […]