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How do filmmakers use colour palettes
There are many nuances to a film that often go unnoticed. No, we are not talking about Easter eggs and references to pop culture or other movies. Though the end product is a cohesive structure a few hours long, a film comprises of numerous features and characteristics that must be synchronised to ensure an incredible…
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Film Review: Stardust
★★★☆☆ It’s been five years since David Bowie passed away and filmmaker Gabriel Range has acknowledged the anniversary with Stardust, an unauthorised biopic which commemorates the pop icon’s early struggles with stardom. The film stumbles between moods, caught between overt mythmaking and something closer to historical detail, which leaves an enjoyable but incomplete picture of…
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Film Review: One Night in Miami
★★★★☆ It’s hard to imagine Cassius Clay ever taking a back seat in a discussion or standing down from a fight, but his is by no means the loudest voice in the room in One Night in Miami. Or, at least, not all the time. For it is togetherness, solidarity and the power of a collective…
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Film Review: MLK/FBI
★★★★☆ MLK/FBI is an insightful, adroitly constructed documentary which seeks to mine new truths from a recent, tangible past. Filmmaker Sam Pollard pits the aspirations, endeavours and character of a great, but flawed humanitarian against the racially-driven, underhand tactics of a tyrannical government organisation. Along with its title, Pollard’s latest is a film of three-letter acronyms…
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Film Review: Dear Comrades!
★★★★☆ On 2 June 1962, during a protest about rising food prices and poor working conditions, Soviet soldiers opened fire on civilians in what would become known as the ‘Novocherkassk massacre’, officially killing 26 but in reality closer to 90 people. Veteran Russian director Andrei Konchalovskiy tackles the atrocity in this tense, stark and uncompromising…
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Film Review: Pieces of a Woman
★★☆☆☆ Cinema’s unique facility to connect image, sound and narrative gives it a special power: there is not a medium that can portray the vast spectrum of emotional experience with the immediacy that films can. Perhaps this is why cinematic trauma has such visceral capacity to shock us. For one scene, and one scene only,…
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Film Review: Sing Me a Song
★★☆☆☆ Eight-year-old Peyangki lives in Bhutan, in one of the of the remotest villages in the world. As he trains diligently to become a Buddhist monk, the imminent arrival of electricity in the village and a proper road to the city promises progress and anxiety in equal measure. Ten years later, Peyangki is now eighteen…
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Film Review: Soul
★★★☆☆ In his fourth Pixar feature, director Pete Docter grapples with matters of life and death to interrogate definitions of earthly success. Soul is certainly head and shoulders above the studio’s directionless last effort, Onward, but its lofty aspirations never reach the transcendence of top-tier Pixar. Joe (Jamie Foxx) is an aspiring jazz musician, stuck…
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Film Review: Wonder Woman 1984
★★★☆☆ It’s nearly seventy years after Diana of Themyscira aka Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) saved the world from the ravages of war. Now, among the day-glo leotards and crisp white leg warmers of the 1980s, her biggest fight is the conflict between her desires and her duty. Remember when DC’s answer to the colour and…
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The best of 2020: Our films of the year
In last year’s top ten list, we remarked on how streaming had “truly arrived” as a contender to traditional cinema exhibition. We had known for some time that cinema was experiencing a paradigm shift, but we couldn’t possibly have known just how profoundly and rapidly it would change in the following twelve months. And what…
VENICE 2026