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DVD Review: The Defiant Ones
★★★★☆ When a prisoner transport crashes during a night-time storm, John ‘Joker’ Jackson (Tony Curtis) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) make their escape, chained together by the wrist. The director’s third feature, The Defiant Ones combines Stanley Kramer’s trademark liberal politics with a picaresque adventure that is deftly entertaining, tense and heartfelt. Poitier’s most famous…
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Film Review: Ocean’s 8
★★★☆☆ Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s trilogy was, briefly, the hottest property in Hollywood. The star-studded cast of his 2001 Rat Pack remake delivered a film that was flawlessly confident, engaging and, above all, fun. It was as pure a two hours of joy as cinema could deliver, but Soderbergh went somewhat off-piste with the two sequels, including a…
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Film Review: The Ciambra
★★★☆☆ Located on the toe end of Italy’s boot, Gioa Tauro is a testament to Italy’s failure to develop the south. Far from the tourist traps of Rome and Venice and even the fizzier, more dangerous charms of Naples, the town has become synonymous with poverty, crime and the failure of the state. A sequel…
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Film Review: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
★★☆☆☆ In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, life may well have found a way, but the same can’t be said for decent screenwriting or even basic logic in this execrable sequel. It’s a pretty mean feat to beat even Jurassic Park III as the worst JP film to date, but even a handful of nice flourishes…
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Sheffield DocFest 2018: Our picks of the programme
This week sees the return of one of the highlights of the UK’s festival calendar in the form of Sheffield Doc/Fest, which runs from 7-12 June for its 2018 edition. As ever, the programme of over 200 documentary shorts and features boasts an array of non-fiction from thrilling crowd-pleasers and thought-provoking journalism to virtual realities…
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Sundance 2018: The Tale review
★★★★☆ Documentary filmmaker Jennifer Fox unravels her own history of sexual abuse in The Tale, a sharp and harrowing account of stories and lies hidden away at the expense of innocence. The truth of the story as far as Jennifer Fox (Laura Dern) knows, The Tale centres around the discovery of a school assignment recounting…
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Film Review: Skate Kitchen
★★★★☆ A young skateboarder discovers her tribe and falls into the intricacies of young adult friendship in Skate Kitchen, the first narrative film from filmmaker Crystal Moselle, known for her documentary work The Wolfpack. Moselle’s film captures a unique insight into an unexplored subculture, focusing on a group of passionate skater girls in New York…
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Sundance 2018: Never Goin’ Back review
★★★☆☆ Fresh faces Maia Mitchell and Cami Morrone star in the debut feature film from Texan director Augustine Frizzell, the chaotic, stoner-girl trip Never Goin’ Back – playing this weekend at Sundance London. High-school dropouts Jessie (Morrone) and Angela (Mitchell) are inseparable. Nothing matters more to them than each other as they move from day-to-day,…
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Film Review: Hereditary
★★★★★ Australian actress Toni Collette is outstanding in the deeply unsettling and frankly terrifying Hereditary, the latest feature on A24’s roster (released through Entertainment Film here in the UK on 15 June) and the latest classic of the horror genre. Hereditary opens with the funeral of Annie’s (Collette) mother and begins its gruelling descent into…
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Interview: François Ozon, dir. L’Amant Double
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.
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