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Film Review: Loro
★☆☆☆☆ Paolo Sorrentino announced himself on the international stage with the sterling Il Divo, a study of Italy’s perennial mover and fixer Giulio Andreotti and in the process an evisceration of the Italian political class, with a style that oscillated between Quentin Tarantino and Federico Fellini. Since then Sorrentino’s career has been fireworks and squibs…
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Film Review: Red Joan
★★★☆☆ Based on a true story, Trevor Nunn’s Red Joan is an absorbing wartime drama about a spy ring. It opens in 2000 with Joan (Judi Dench), a pensioner happily tending her roses. Shocked by her unexpected arrest for alleged treason, she is forced to recall her Cambridge University years. In the late 1930s, young…
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Film Review: The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot
★★★★☆ For a film to announce itself with such a knowingly outlandish title, you’d be forgiven for thinking that The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot was deliberately baiting that midnight movie-type audience. You only need to see the wistful gaze of the great Sam Elliott – sat propping up a bar in…
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Film Review: Mid90s
★★☆☆☆ Written and directed by Jonah Hill, Mid90s paints a deeply personal, sun-drenched vision of skate culture in Los Angeles, as seen through the eyes of its teenage protagonist. It’s the latest production from A24, the company who brought us Moonlight, Lady Bird and Eighth Grade, who have established themselves as the foremost voice in films about the pains and pressures…
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Film Review: Wild Rose
★★★☆☆ In the era-defining Trainspotting, Ewan McGregor’s Renton exclaims “It’s shit being Scottish.” As a fellow Scotsman, raised in England, this writer can confirm that it is indeed shit being Scottish. Still, this derogatory attitude towards one’s nationality pervades in a less explicit manner in Tom Harper’s third feature, Wild Rose. Written by Nicole Taylor,…
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DVD Round-up: Mar 2019 edition
Our championing of the best in home entertainment continues with our March round-up. Criterion and Eureka dominate this month’s line up with four wildly-different titles all deserving of attention – Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger, Sammo Hung’s Meals on Wheels, and Billy Wilder’s Irma la Douce. Death in Venice – 18 March (Criterion)…
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Film Review: Last Breath
★★★☆☆ Saturation diving in the North Sea is a world of experience that most of us know nothing about. One of the divers in Alex Parkinson and Richard da Costa’s new film Last Breath, in UK cinemas this week, describes as going to space but underwater. The divers have to enter specially pressurised capsules in…
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Film Review: A Clockwork Orange
★★★★☆ Unlike many book adaptations, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange stands equally apart and with Anthony Burgess’ original source material. Presenting Burgess’ unique world on-screen – importantly retaining his character’s Nadsat dialectic – Kubrick’s methodical attention to detail proved to be a harmonious match to the author’s prose. Committed to an unfiltered depiction of violence,…
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Film Review: Shazam!
★★★☆☆ Originally called ‘Captain Marvel’ in early DC comics, due to a convoluted copyright issue Marvel’s distinguished competition were forced to change the superhero’s name to the equally silly moniker, Shazam. The origins of this colourful crime-fighter may be dull, but his cinematic debut is anything but – a warm and entertaining family romp brimming…
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Film Review: Us
★★★★★ Hot from 2017 hit Get Out, comedian-turned-director Jordan Peele is back in the horror playhouse, confirming his preternatural, studied mastery of the genre. Forget the presumptive denial of terms of “elevated” and “post-horror” – Us is a true genre flick, polished to a fine degree, a pure distillation of the essence of horror cinema. From the opening…
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