Film Reviews
The Wound review - gay love hurts in strong South African dramaFriday, 27 April 2018
The title of South African director John Trengove’s powerful first feature works in more ways than one. In its literal sense, it alludes to the ritual circumcision, or ukwaluka, that accompanies the traditional rite of passage for young Xhosa men, and the process of healing that follows.... Read more... |
The Deminer review - life on the edge in IraqTuesday, 24 April 2018
Major Fakhir is a deminer, responsible for disarming hundreds of mines around Mosul every week. His American counterparts know him by a different title: Crazy Fakhir, a man who rides the edge of his luck, constantly in imminent danger. Read more... |
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society review - artery-furring whimsyFriday, 20 April 2018
There’s a serious film to be made about the German occupation of the Channel Islands. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is not that film. The absolute gobful of a title more than hints at artery-furring whimsy. Read more... |
Funny Cow review - Maxine Peake is stellarThursday, 19 April 2018
One of the joys of writing about comedy over the past few years is the decreasing frequency with which I am asked to comment on “women in comedy”, “female comics” or, most egregiously, “are women funny?” I think we can all agree that you're either funny or you're not, no matter which gonads you carry around. Read more... |
Custody review - unflinching and masterfulTuesday, 10 April 2018
Divorce proceedings turn sour in this devastating debut from writer/director Xavier Legrand. Read more... |
120 BPM review - stirring portrait of French activism in the age of AIDSFriday, 06 April 2018
Activism is back with a vengeance in our parlous political age, so what better time to welcome 120 BPM as a reminder of an impulse that has never truly gone away? Read more... |
Wonderstruck review - beautifully designed but emotionally unengagingFriday, 06 April 2018
What is it about Brian Selznick’s ornate illustrated fictions that leads good directors to make bad films? Turning The Invention of Hugo Cabret into Hugo was a near disaster for Scorsese, and now comes Todd Haynes’s stifling adaptation of Selznick’s novel, ... Read more... |
Sweet Country review - hell in the OutbackWednesday, 04 April 2018
Recently the world has been entertained by the shameless amateur theatricals from some of Australia’s lavishly-paid cricketers, but Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country transports us back to a harsher, crueller Australia, where men might have justifiably shed a tear as they scraped a hard living from the... Read more... |
Isle of Dogs review - canine caper with a messageFriday, 30 March 2018
This isn't a feature about London's former docklands (although much of it was made in a studio nearby), but rather Wes Anderson's second foray into stop-motion animation (after 2009's Fantastic Mr. Read more... |
Journeyman review - Paddy Considine wins on pointsFriday, 30 March 2018
Boxing movies are often about redemption in the ring. From Somebody Up There Likes Me to last year’s Bleed for This via Rocky, the story stays the same: boxer seeks peace though punching. In Journeyman, Paddy Considine travels along a different path. Read more... |
Ready Player One review - Spielberg goes back to the futureThursday, 29 March 2018
Suddenly Steven Spielberg movies are plopping off the production line like Ford Fiestas or Cadburys Creme Eggs. Read more... |
The Islands and the Whales review - masterful, sensitive eco-documentaryWednesday, 28 March 2018
A feature-length documentary on whaling in the Faroe Islands: you might think you can see it unfolding already. Hardy Viking fishermen battling the elements, gruesome killings of majestic sea creatures, implied or outright condemnation of the shocking brutality. Scottish director Mike Day’s masterful film is no shock-factor exposé,... Read more... |
Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words, BBC One review - emotional nomad with a fragile gift for joyTuesday, 27 March 2018
Ever nursed an immoderate fondness for Ingrid Bergman? In Her Own Words, a bio-documentary released in the cinema then on DVD in 2016 and shown last night on BBC One as part of the Imagine... Read more... |
I Got Life! review - fresh French comic realismSaturday, 24 March 2018
I Got Life!, originally released in France as Aurore, is a lovely, funny low-budget comedy that should definitely appeal to female movie-goers with a fondness for quirky, feisty women d’un certain age. It’s the kind of film that one would probably go to with a... Read more... |
Crowhurst review - plucky indie wins race with rivalSaturday, 24 March 2018
Perhaps it’s fitting that Donald Crowhurst should once more find himself in a race. Even more aptly, it’s a race against himself. You wait half a century for a biopic about the round-the-world yachtsman who disappeared off the face of the earth, and then two turn up at once. This sort of clash sometimes happens in film, and one movie always ends up trouncing the other. Read more... |
The Third Murder review - unpacking a crime enigmaFriday, 23 March 2018
Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu offers up mystery aplenty in his new film The Third Murder, enigma and riddle too. He also moves away from the territory of family drama for which he is best known. There’s similar intensity in some of the relationships between characters here as in his previous work, and it’s engrossingly atmospheric – some visual elements speak as strongly as anything the director has made, while Ludovico Einaudi’s piano/cello-dominated score is almost a player... Read more... |
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