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Film Review: Loveless
★★★★☆ The breakdown of a marriage is the stuff of many a taught, uncomfortable drama, and Loveless – the latest film from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev – offers a superbly icy portrait of a disintegrating relationship and the intolerable strain that places on the couple’s only child. Zvyagintsev’s previous film, 2014’s Leviathan, was an emotional…
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Criterion Review: Something Wild
★★★☆☆ Jonathan Demme may have been better known for his dramatic work, but his 1985 comedy Something Wild is undoubtedly worth reconsideration. Charlie (Jeff Daniels) is a stiff New York executive, but when the anarchic Audrey (Melanie Griffith) notices him welch on a lunch bill, she sees something of a rebel in him. The film’s…
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Film Review: Makala
★★★★☆ In the Congolese countryside lies a stretch of road about 30 km long. Along this road, locals heave bags full of charcoal on their rusty bikes, tipping over at every bump as they make their three-day journey towards the town’s major market. Here, competitive workers begin their trade in a business that sees thousands of…
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Film Review: Phantom Thread
★★★★★ New Year celebrations have only recently been and gone, but it may well prove difficult to find a more perfect film than Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread in 2018. That shouldn’t come as a surprise from a director behind two of the great film masterpieces of the 21st century – There Will Be Blood…
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Film Review: Journey’s End
★★★★☆ The First World War might be overshadowed in the contemporary mind by its more famous sequel, but in some ways it is of greater historical importance. It destroyed once and for all the possibility of a heroic conception of war, which simply could not be reconciled with the brutal reality of trenches, chemical weapons…
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LSFF 2018: Our festival roundup
The London Short Film Festival returned to the capital this month with another cornucopia of new and beloved shorts from around the world. Taking place from 12 – 21 January it gave UK audiences a chance to catch up with shorts that have premiered on the festival circuit over the past year as well as…
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Criterion Review: Ivan’s Childhood
★★★★★ On the Eastern Front, 10-year-old Ivan Bondarev (Nikolay Burlyaev) is a Russian scout spying on the German army in order to avenge his family. Ivan’s Childhood may not be master filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s finest work, yet his enduring aesthetic and political concerns are all present and correct in the director’s superlative debut film. We…
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Film Review: Last Flag Flying
★★★★☆ The ever-prolific Richard Linklater is back with Last Flag Flying, a deeply mournful road movie that deals with the sudden loss of a family member in the United States Marine Corps, and the remorse of a past where a tragic accident severs close friendships. One night In 2003, Larry – aka Doc (Steve Carell) – receives…
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Oscars 2018: The Shape of Water top with 13 nominations
This year’s Academy Awards nominations were revealed earlier this afternoon. Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water picked up the most nominations on 13, closely followed by Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The 90th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will take place at the Dolby Theatre, Los Angeles, on…
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DVD Review: When the Wind Blows
★★★★☆ Jimmy Murakami’s adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ graphic novel When the Wind Blows is a moving tale of a nuclear holocaust and its impact on the lives of an ordinary married couple of old age pensioners. As mad as the Trump era is for anyone who grew up or lived through the 1980s there’s a…
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