Sundance 2021: Passing review
★★★★☆ The directorial debut of Rebecca Hall, Passing is an intoxicating, dreamlike adaptation of Nella Larsen’s novella of the same name. A deeply personal endeavour […]
Sundance 2021: At the Ready review
★★★★☆ Building bridges between the past, present and future of three Latinx teens in El Paso, Texas, Maisie Crow’s At the Ready investigates one of […]
Sundance 2021: Sabaya review
★★★★★ “Daesh [ISIS] feel they have the right to use sabaya girls as personal slaves. To rape them and sell them.” The horrors of life […]
Sundance 2021: Prime Time review
★★☆☆☆ Jakub Piątek’s Prime Time is a claustrophobic chamber piece set in Warsaw on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Bringing his narrative feature debut to Sundance in the […]
Sundance 2021: President review
★★★★☆ “This is a war room. I am here for a fight.” Under no illusion as to the scale of the task at hand, the […]
Sundance 2021: Luzzu review
★★★★☆ Alex Camilleri’s Luzzu charts a course between the dispassionate neo-realism of the Dardenne brothers and Gianfranco Rosi’s keen but objective documentarian eye. It is […]
Sundance 2021: Summer of Soul review
★★★★★ Recalling the moment she walked out on stage and looked upon the assembled crowd of thousands at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, Mavis […]
Sundance 2021: Playing with Sharks review
★★★☆☆ A daredevil activity that for most would be considered the stuff of nightmares has, for diver and marine conservationist Valerie Taylor, been a lifelong […]
Sundance 2021: The Pink Cloud review
★★★☆☆ Try as she might to refute any suggestions of prophecy, Iuli Gerbase’s The Pink Cloud will strike very close to the bone for audiences […]
Sundance 2021: Human Factors review
★★★☆☆ When is a house not a home? And how thinly stretched are the ties that bind together the people within their walls? Ronny Trocker’s […]
Sundance 2021: CODA review
★★★☆☆ Ticking all of the small-town America coming-of-age drama bingo boxes, there’s a significant twist to the full house of Siân Heder’s CODA. Ruby Rossi, […]
Sundance 2021: Programme preview
If the past year has taught cultural institutions the world over anything, it’s that the show can and must go on. The continuing Covid-19 pandemic […]
Film Review: Synchronic
★★★☆☆ Blending science fiction, crime drama and psychedelia, Synchronic is the wildly eccentric fourth film by American filmmaking duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (The […]
Film Review: The Capote Tapes
★★★☆☆ Cinema has a love/hate relationship with Truman Capote. On the evidence of The Capote Tapes, almost everyone did. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – a slim […]
Film Review: Beginning
★★★★☆ Beginning is, in many respects, an astonishing film in its assured austerity, confidence and evident lack of compromise. More astonishing, perhaps, that it is […]
Film Review: Assassins
★★★★☆ American filmmaker Ryan White, director of the acclaimed Netflix mini-series The Keepers, spins a web of riveting, murderous intrigue in his latest documentary Assassins. […]
Why Casablanca is one of the greatest movies ever made
Although 1942’s Casablanca was an A-list picture with major stars like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, no one involved with its production thought it would […]
Film Review: Quo Vadis, Aida?
★★★★★ In July 1995, during the final months of the Bosnian War, Bosnian Serb soldiers massacred 8,000 Bosnian Muslim boys and men in what became […]