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Film Review: Joker
★★★★★ Joaquin Phoenix gives an Oscar-worthy performance as the Clown Prince of Crime in Todd Phillips’ unique take on the Batman supervillain Joker, which also won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Joker is a film that didn’t feel necessary when announced. There has been a glut of superhero movies and there…
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Film Review: The Peanut Butter Falcon
★★★★☆ A seemingly mismatched road-trip buddy movie, Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz’s The Peanut Butter Falcon is heartwarming and filled to the brim with humour and charm. Mourning the loss of his brother Mark (Jon Bernthal), fisherman Tyler (Shia LaBeouf) is struggling to make ends meet and resorts to stealing the crab catch from other…
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Film Review: The Last Tree
★★★★☆ British filmmaker Shola Amoo loses none of the authenticity in transitioning from documentary to narrative cinema with The Last Tree, an assured and moving sophomore effort. The coming-of-age tale – which is also semi-autobiographical – focuses on Femi (played as a child by Tai Golding, before morphing into Sam Adewunmi as a teen), a…
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Interview: Shola Amoo and Sam Adewunmi, The Last Tree
British filmmaker Shola Amoo returns to screens this week with his sophomore effort The Last Tree. The coming-of-age tale tells the story of Femi, a Nigerian boy fostered in Lincolnshire who struggles to reconnect with his culture after he moves in with his biological mother.
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Nordisk Panorama 2019: Our festival highlights
The Nordisk Panorama Film Festival returned to Sweden for its 30th year, showcasing new and established talent in the fields of documentaries and shorts from the Nordisk countries. With over 80 films screened, Nordisk Panorama is the largest festival for Nordic documentary and short films. Once called the Festival of Five Cities – traditionally rotating its…
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Film Review: The Farewell
★★★★☆ “Based on an actual lie” is the text that sets audiences up rather nicely for the lilting tone of Sundance hit The Farewell, the deeply personal and semi-autobiographical second feature from American writer and director Lulu Wang. Hoping to capitalise on the representational ground gained by last year’s Crazy Rich Asians, and already a critical…
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Film Review: Ad Astra
★★★★★ From the thin blue line that divides the brothers of We Own the Night to the disrupted family units of Little Odessa and The Lost City of Z, it’s the external forces that pull us apart rather than the ties that bind us that’s of most interest to American filmmaker James Gray. Gray once again returns…
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Toronto 2019: Jojo Rabbit takes People’s Choice Award
Despite dividing critics following its world premiere, Jojo Rabbit won over audiences in the public vote: Joker may well have had the last laugh at Venice, but it was Taika Waititi’s Second World War satire that won over audiences in Toronto, hopping ahead as a favourite in the coming awards season race. Waititi’s film beat Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and Bong…
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Film Review: So Long, My Son
★★★★★ “I don’t want to be like my mum,” Haohao (Du Jiang) tells old family friends Yaojun (Wang Jingchung) and Liyun (Yong Mei), “living with guilt until the end”. In veteran Chinese filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai’s sweeping sixteenth feature, guilt, forgiveness and acceptance span generations, buffeted by the sweeping forces of state social policies and the…
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Toronto 2019: Sea Fever review
★★☆☆☆ A creature feature for the environmentalist age, Irish TV and film director Neasa Hardiman’s latest project is a fun and inventive body horror that falls just short of a recommendation. Combining elements from Sphere, Alien and The Thing, Sea Fever uses the unchartered depths of the ocean to conjure its beastie. The best cinematic monsters have always had an…
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