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Film Review: The County
★★★★☆ Slipping under the radar at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, The County was nevertheless a hit with those who sought it out. Released on Curzon Home Cinema this week, this western-tinged, visceral Icelandic drama deserves as large an audience as possible. Despite the obvious Icelandic setting of Grímur Hákonarson’s (Rams) third fiction feature, its sublime rugged…
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Film Review: Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema
★★★★☆ In his follow-up to The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Mark Cousins takes us on a “new road movie through cinema”, a 14-hour virtual film school made up entirely of the all-too-often forgotten links: masterful films directed by women. Please note that this is a review of the complete 14-hour film. “The film industry…
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Ten great poker movies to watch at home
One of the greatest things about poker is the drama of the game itself. Just imagine the thrill professional players feel while they play, knowing that a single card could change their lives forever. Knowing how popular poker is and what a huge public it appeals to, many Hollywood directors have created films about poker,…
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Film Review: Never Rarely Sometimes Always
★★★★☆ In the years since Juno offered a light-hearted but even-handed take on the subject of unwanted teen pregnancy, the discourse around reproductive rights in America has, if anything, grown more polarised. Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a subtle, quietly devastating look at how a young woman’s body is constantly subject to outside…
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Film Review: The Whistlers
★★☆☆☆ Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu’s seventh feature (and second out this month in the UK, the other being documentary Infinite Football), is a stylish and fitfully engaging crime thriller with a great concept, let down by incoherent plotting and impenetrable characterisation. Cristi (Vlad Ivanov), a middle-aged cop working for the Bucharest police force, is working…
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Film Review: Infinite Football
★★★★☆ A Romanian pen pusher’s attempts to revolutionise the beautiful game goes far beyond inverting the pyramid in Corneliu Porumboiu’s hilarious Infinite Football, a semi-follow-up to The Second Game. The introduction of rules to the game of football gave it a shared language and helped turn it into a spectator sport – but as the…
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Film Review: Romantic Comedy
★☆☆☆☆ In her directorial debut Romantic Comedy, British musician and actor Elizabeth Sankey examines the history of one of cinema’s greatest and most enduring genres. Sadly, a love of romantic comedies and a sharp approach to editing are not enough to buoy up this hopelessly shallow documentary. Opening on a scene from the 2008 film…
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Film Review: Camino Skies
★★☆☆☆ Camino Skies tracks six pilgrims from New Zealand and Australia as they embark on the historic five hundred mile pilgrimage that winds across Spain to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The gruelling pilgrimage – known in English as the Way of St. James – across the top of Spain has been…
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Film Review: Ema
★★★★★ When Pablo Larraín took the helm of Jackie, it was the first time the Chilean director had attempted two things: a story set outside of Latin America and one with a female protagonist. With Ema, Larraín is back in his home country, weaving a tightly-controlled narrative of family and female empowerment around its magnetic…
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Film Review: Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy
★★★★☆ At an age when, for most, a trip to the bathroom would count as the most strenuous task of the day, ex-pat champion of authentic Mexican cuisine Diana Kennedy is still excitedly on the hunt for that most elusive and unforgettable of tamales recipes. Something of a national treasure in her adopted country, we…
Cannes 2026