Edinburgh 2017: That Good Night review
★★☆☆☆ Esteemed British actor John Hurt sadly passed away earlier this year at the age of 77, with one of his final roles being...
★★☆☆☆ “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,” Percy Shelley once wrote in his sonnet England in 1819. He was firing his barbs at King George III but the words could just as well be used for any number of English monarchs including Henry VIII.
★★★★★ Turkish master director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to the Cannes Croisette with About Dry Grasses, a wonderful wintry meditation on male fragility and the way we often make our own hells and then deceive ourselves that we’re trapped.
★★★★☆ From sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan, Syria to Iraq and Iran, the climate crisis, drought, war, and oppression has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. It is treated as an ethical conundrum, but it isn’t. Either we wish to save those who are in danger of dying, or all our talk of human rights is just so much hot air. This is the core concern of Green Border.
★★★★☆ With Luca Guadagnino’s terrific Challengers, the acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name brings us the sub-genre we never knew we needed: the erotic tennis thriller.
★★☆☆☆ Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s “Abigail” mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless experience lacking creativity and wit.
★★☆☆☆ Maïwenn’s French period drama Jeanne du Barry is the perfect opening salvo for the 76th Cannes Film Festival. It is as glitzy and gaudy as the festival itself, with its vacuous politics drowned out by the thunderous sound of it slapping its own back.
★★☆☆☆ Esteemed British actor John Hurt sadly passed away earlier this year at the age of 77, with one of his final roles being...
★★★★☆ This biopic of celebrated gay icon Touko Valio Laaksonen (known to many as Tom of Finland, played by Pekka Strang) is smartly made...
★★★☆☆ Adapted from the best-selling novel Why We Took the Car, Goodbye Berlin is a quirky German coming-of-age comedy that’s funny if a bit...
★★★★☆ Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country, a poignant gay romance about self-discovery in rural West Yorkshire, has been labelled a Brokeback Mountain on the...
★★★★☆ What would you do if you discovered a pile of cash and there was no one watching? In a consumer-driven society, it’s fair...
Doors to the Edinburgh International Film Festival reopened tonight with the UK premiere of acclaimed coming-of-age drama God’s Own Country. The festival, now in...
★★★☆☆ The late art critic and writer John Berger and actress Tilda Swinton share the same birthday: 5 November. They also share the experience...
★★★★☆ Documentarian Mark Cousins makes the move to fiction with Stockholm, My Love, also marking singer Neneh Cherry’s feature debut in a melancholy turn...