Film Reviews & More
★★☆☆☆ “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.
★★★★☆ At key moments in first-time writer-director Blerta Basholli’s Hive, windows, mason jars and a picture frame are all broken. Marking significant flashpoints in a simmering narrative, these incidents propel the film towards its smashing of an overbearing glass ceiling.
The winners of this year’s EE British Academy Film Awards were announced earlier this evening at the ceremony’s regular home, London’s Royal Albert Hall, after 2021’s Covid-restricted event. The Power of the Dog was the big story of the night, winning both Best Film and Best Director for Jane Campion.
★★★★☆ “There is no way out.” Lifer Viktor (Georg Friedrich) barks this at his decades-old friend and cellmate, Hans (Franz Rogowski), on the prospect of breaking out of their West German prison in 1969 in Austrian filmmaker Sebastian Miese’s second narrative feature.
★★★★☆ Sean Baker is quickly establishing himself as one of the finest filmmakers in America today. With Starlet, Tangerine and The Florida Project, he has already displayed a precise and empathetic eye for those living the hardscrabble life at the skuzzy end of the American Dream.
★★★★☆ Robert Pattinson dons the cape and cowl to wreak vengeance on the city that took his parents’ lives, and in the process take down The Riddler (Paul Dano), Penguin (Colin Farrell) and Carmine Falcone (John Turturro). Matt Reeves’ The Batman is just as moody but twice as smart as previous iterations.
★★★★★ In Ali & Ava, Yorkshire-born director Clio Barnard’s fourth feature film, two lovers defy the aged, gendered, classed and racialised expectations of their families and communities. Ali (Adeel Akhtar) is a landlord with a gift for the gab and a tender care for his tenants.
★★☆☆☆ The late British director Roger Michell’s final film, The Duke is based on the true story of Kempton Bunton (played here by Jim Broadbent), a pensioner from Benwell in Newcastle upon Tyne who, in 1961, stole Francisco Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery.
★★★★☆ Following a group of teenage girls, La Mif is a nuanced and moving study of life in a care home in Geneva. No single performer – largely non-professional actors – in the piece stands above the rest. Rather, the cast work in unison to give a singular, outstanding ensemble performance.
