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Film Review: The Eyes of Orson Welles
★★★★☆ Film historian Mark Cousins turns a loving gaze to the extraordinary global talent of the legendary American filmmaker Orson Welles, using his voluminous paintings and sketches as a point of departure. Having started his film directing career with one of the masterpieces of American cinema Citizen Kane, Welles himself has been as frequently regarded…
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Film Review: Christopher Robin
★★★☆☆ Ideally, Disney would stop updating beloved cartoon classics into new live-action films, but as that seems unlikely, it’s lucky the Marc Forster-directed Christopher Robin has enough charm to get by. Over the past few years, Disney has doubled-down on the live-action remake gravy train. Despite Tim Burton’s regrettable sojourns into Wonderland and the intermittently exciting…
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Film Review: The Guardians
★★★☆☆ Best-known for Of Gods And Men, a film about a group of lonely men in a monastery at a time of political conflict, Xavier Beauvois is back with The Guardians, a film about a group of lonely women on a farm at a time of political conflict. Jokes about self-plagiarism aside, The Guardians is…
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The Hustler – Paul Newman’s finest role?
Initially released on the same year as Paris Blues, which Paul Newman also starred in, The Hustler tells the story of infamous pool hustler Eddie Felson (Newman). Felson goes from pool hall to pool hall, hustling amateur pool players out of their hard-earned money. It’s a strategy that earned him the titled “Fast Eddie.” While…
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Locarno 2018: Festival roundup
With the 71st Locarno Film Festival coming to a close at the weekend and the prizes awarded, our contributor John Bleasdale notes some of the highs and lows of Swiss based celebration of film. There were many strong independent and frequently eponymous women at Locarno this year. Meet Sibel, for instance, a young woman shunned…
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Locarno 2018: Golden Leopard goes to Yeo Siew Hua’s A Land Imagined
The 71st Locarno Film Festival came to a close today and the awards have been announced. The top prize was taken by Yeo Siew Hua’s A Land Imagined, a dreamlike noir about a policeman searching Singapore for missing migrant worker. Yolande Zauberman got the Jury Prize for her crushing documentary about child rape in a…
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Film Review: Heathers
★★★☆☆ Another week, another anniversary celebration of a firm favourite from the decade that continues to be more influential across the modern pop culture landscape than any other time period. In an era when Winona Ryder was the celebrated alternative American sweetheart, and Christian Slater could still get away with his junior Jack Nicholson routine,…
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Film Review: The Meg
★★★☆☆ Loosely based on a series of trash sci-fi horror novels, The Meg surges into as many multiplexes as it can muster this weekend hoping to offer the kind of Jaws-lite jolts that enraptured a generation back in 1977. It’s also very conspicuously the type of American-Chinese co-production that we’ll undoubtedly see more of given the choppy waters of…
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Film Review: The Heiresses
★★★★☆ This modest but polished film follows an older woman’s journey of self-discovery as her partner is sent to jail. Set in the Paraguayan capital city of Asunción, Marcelo Martinessi’s The Heiresses opens as the vivacious Chiquita (Margarita Irún) finds out she has been sentenced to prison for unpaid debts. No more information than this…
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Film Review: Sicilian Ghost Story
★★★☆☆ Based on the real-life abduction of Giuseppe di Matteo, Sicilian Ghost Story combines teen romance, realist crime drama and gothic fable. Writer-directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s second feature is an impeccably shot, often gripping picture that falls just short of its psychological aspirations. As 13-year old Giuseppe (Gaetano Fernandez) walks home from school through the woods,…
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