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Film Review: Sicario 2: Soldado
★★★☆☆ Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario was a masterclass in direction, cinematography, sound design and dramatic tension. This year’s sequel Sicario 2: Soldado, directed by Italian crime-thriller veteran Stefano Sollima, is a solid but less memorable effort. Despite its big-name cast and eventful narrative, the original film had a distinctly art-house touch to it, and never felt…
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Film Review: Patrick
★★☆☆☆ The phrase “man’s best friend” is put firmly to the test in Patrick, a new British comedy from Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie director Maddie Fletcher. Sarah (Beattie Edmondson) is the odd one out of her family. Her life is messy, love life a constant disappointment and feelings of living in her sister’s shadows accentuated…
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Film Review: Leave No Trace
★★★★★ Eight years on from Winter’s Bone, director Debra Granik offers up Leave No Trace starring Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie, an intricately crafted and haunting drama, based on the novel My Abandonment by Peter Rock. “Your socks burned you,” scolds Will (Foster) when he discovers his daughter, Tom, hiding in the undergrowth of a…
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Edinburgh 2018: Meeting Jim review
★★★☆☆ Jim Haynes is the focus of Meeting Jim, an unexpectedly captivating documentary by Ece Ger that’s been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Film award at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. Quite rightly too, as Jim spent a large portion of his life in the Scottish capital, attending university and running a number…
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Criterion Review: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
★★★★☆ After his best friend Esteban is devoured my a mysterious monster of the deep, the legendary undersea documentarian Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) vows to find and destroy the creature to avenge his friend. Designating the animal the ‘jaguar shark’, Zissou and his team set out in search of his elusive nemesis. Matters are complicated…
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DVD Review: Iron Monkey
★★★★☆ Very loosely based on the childhood of Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-Hung, Woo-Ping Yuen’s Iron Monkey is a terrifically entertaining action picture in the Hong Kong Kung Fu tradition. Woo-Ping would later go on to choreograph the fight sequences in The Matrix films, but it is here where the director is truly in his…
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Film Review: Incredibles 2
★★★★☆ The Marvel Cinematic Universe may have the market hold, but Incredibles 2 – which arrives some fourteen years after the original – is a superior superhero film to much of their output. It’s also a wonderfully ever-inventive film that, despite being a sequel, feels fresh and original. The film picks up where the last…
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Edinburgh 2018: Calibre review
★★★★☆ Matt Palmer’s debut feature Calibre is a tense, brutal thriller set in the rural Scottish Highlands. It boasts meaty performances from local talent Jack Lowden and Martin McCann as Vaughn and Marcus respectively, two childhood friends reunited for a weekend hunting trip. Vaughn is hesitant, now settled with a child on the way, while…
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Five films where lucky breaks save the day
When we think of the world’s most heroic movie protagonists, ranging from superheroes such as Superman and Iron Man, to the likes of The Terminator’s Sarah Connor and Mad Max: Fury Road’s Furiosa, we think of them as brave, unflinching badasses who have an innate power to save the day and escape from danger. While…
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Criterion Review: Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
★★★★★ On 25 November 1970, Yukio Mishima, one of Japan’s leading authors, attempted a coup d’etat with three members of his private army before committing seppuku. Paul Schrader’s stunning biopic follows Mishima over the course of that day, punctuated by flashbacks of his real life and dramatised segments of his novels. The final day of…
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