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Film Review: Max Richter’s Sleep
★★★★☆ In 2015, German-British composer Max Richter and creative partner Yulia Mahr released his most ambitious work to date, an eight and a half hour composition designed to be listened to while sleeping. Natalie Johns’ documentary on the piece is an appropriately languorous, dreamy exploration of Richter’s music taken at its own pace and pleasurably…
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Film Review: Space Dogs
★★★☆☆ We’ve already had First Man and Apollo 11, but the renewed interest in the space race prompted by the lunar landings anniversary gets its weirdest entry yet with Elsa Kresmer and Levin Peter’s impressionistic documentary Space Dogs. There is a legend, Alexey Serebryakov’s voice tells us, a voice deep and rich in Steppes born…
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Film Review: The Painted Bird
★★★★☆ Premiering in competition at last year’s Venice Film Festival, Václav Marhoul’s adaptation of Jerzy Kosińsk’s 1965 novel The Painted Bird is a gruelling odyssey through the bloody fields of Europe in the middle of the 20th century. Sometimes there are films that you feel people must-see – and mustn’t see at exactly the same…
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Film Review: La Haine
★★★★★ It’s a quarter of a century since La Haine‘s original release, its win for Best Director at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and its stunning worldwide acclaim. Mathieu Kassovitz’s account of police brutality is as ferocious a punch in the stomach as it was twenty-five years ago, and retains every spark of an explosive deconstruction of France’s treatment of…
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Remembering Ghostbusters – a franchise no one could forget
Whether you grew up in the ’80s, the noughties, or anywhere in between; you’ll have heard of Ghostbusters. The original movie was released over four decades ago, but every generation alive today can recount the iconic “Who you gonna call?” theme tune from the timeless supernatural fantasy film. Ghostbusters may have started out as a…
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Films to stream this September
This month’s biggest release is Disney’s remake of Mulan. As we have come to expect from Disney, remakes are easy cash grabs, and draw more on nostalgia than actual cinematic value. The 2020 version of Mulan will divide viewers, as some will appreciate the new stoic take, but many will lament its joylessness, lacking the…
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Film Review: I’m Thinking of Ending Things
★★★★☆ When one door closes in I’m Thinking of Ending Things, some are locked, others left ajar and one which opens memories long buried in the basement is definitely off limits. Director Charlie Kaufman leads us on a not-so-merry dance across these thresholds, literal and figurative, and into the beguiling, psychological maze of his latest…
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Film Review: Koko-di Koko-da
★★☆☆☆ Three figures stalk through a forest – a woman with long, raven-black hair (Katarina Jakobson), a giant, bearded brute carrying a dead dog (Morad Baloo Khatchadorian), and their leader, a grinning, white-suited gent singing a children’s song (Peter Belli). Thus opens Johannes Nyholm’s second feature, its evocative imagery promising psychological terror rendered through childhood…
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Film Review: Sócrates
★★★★☆ Multi-award-winning Brazilian drama Sócrates tells the troubled story of a bereaved gay teenager barely surviving in a São Paulo slum. Directed with quiet restraint and featuring a central performance of startling depth and candour, this movie is a slow-burning story of loss and solitude which is also resonant with humanity, dignity, and hope. The…
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Film Review: Les Misérables
★★★★☆ The film that took the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes shook French President Emmanuel Macron so strongly that he was moved to (ostensibly, at least) begin reforming France’s inner-city ghettos. Ladj Ly’s feature debut takes its inspiration from Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, but this tale of urban deprivation and revolt is as contemporary…
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