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Film Review: Ultraviolence
★★★★★ “They actually have the ability to…to kill. And they’re not sanctioned for it, in any way.” When police officers commit murder with impunity, what possible course of action can be taken by devastated families? When the CPS and IPCC conduct sham investigations, more to save face and keep the lid on cover-ups than to…
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Film Review: Supernova
★★★★☆ Full to the brim with sharp wit, emotional sincerity and overflowing with love, Supernova sees the star power of Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci align. Harry Macqueen’s sophomore feature is a slender, pitch-perfect human drama, whose script, direction and arguably career-best performances combine to heart-rending effect. By no means the first exploration of dementia…
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Film Review: Nashville
★★★★★ “No politics. No government. No nothing!” Remove these elements from any American film set or produced amid the anger, disenchantment and paranoia of the mid-1970s, and what remains? The answer is either a large great white shark or a tongue-in-cheek ode to the birthplace of country and western music However, given a full 4K…
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Film Review: It Must Be Heaven
★★★★☆ Ten years since his last film, renowned Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman makes a welcome return to the fore. At its premiere at Cannes, It Must Be Heaven was selected for the Palme d’Or, garnered a Special Jury Mention and received a standing ovation. It’s not hard to see why: his latest is at once…
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Film Review: In the Earth
★★★★☆ A bruising, beguiling return to the big screen, In the Earth finds Ben Wheatley once again on top form. Provocative, despicably playful, and consistently punishing, stitched into the skin of the writer-director’s latest film are a multitude of issues relating to Covid-19 and the anxieties of lockdown, the fragility of our environment, the brutality and arrogance…
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The best casino movies streaming now
The casino makes for a great movie setting. It’s bright, it’s flashy, and the thrills associated with gambling can make for one anxiety-filled joyride. Sometimes, we’re not trying to take those risks, so we watch a movie and live vicariously through Danny Ocean or Ace Rothstein. There are a ton of articles out there about…
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Film Review: Shiva Baby
★★★★☆ Adapted from her 2018 short, Emma Seligman’s debut feature is a taut, stressful and brilliantly constructed chamber piece. Set during the first day of a shiva for a recently deceased family friend, Shiva Baby is ostensibly a comedy yet has all the tension of a thriller. At its most emotionally fraught, it uses the…
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Film Review: The Father
★★★★★ Are any of old age’s trials as terrifying to contemplate or heart-breaking to witness as the gradual erosion of self that dementia wreaks? In his astonishingly assured debut feature, French playwright-turned-director Florian Zeller handles the mental decline of an elderly man with sensitivity and insight. Last year, Natalie Erika James Relic manifested dementia as…
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Film Review: Land
★★☆☆☆ Mid-way through Land, Robin Wright’s Edee is being taught to hunt by kindly woodsman Miguel (Demián Bichir). Spying a deer, a good distance away on the other side of a broad river, she shuts her eyes, pauses for breath, and fires. Lo and behold, she kills it. Despite being a city girl who has…
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Film Review: The Killing of Two Lovers
★★★★☆ Since 2008, writer-director Robert Machoian has built up an impressive and prolific body of work, largely comprised of shorts and documentaries and peppered with a handful of features. In his fourth feature, The Killing of Two Lovers, Machoian has crafted an intense, moving and bleak portrait of a disintegrating marriage and fractured masculinity. David…
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