Film
Four Mothers review - one gay man deals with three extra mothersFriday, 04 April 2025
An Irish adaptation of Garcia Di Gregorio’s acclaimed 2008 film Mid-August Lunch, director Darren Thornton’s Four Mothers is the story of Edward (James McArdle) and his 81-year-old mother Alma (the excellent Fionnula Flanagan), who has had a stroke... Read more... |
Misericordia review - mushroom-gathering and murder in rural FranceWednesday, 02 April 2025
“Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” The Aesop-ian maxim roughly applies to Jérémie Pastor (Félix Kysyl) in Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia. Though unemployed Toulouse baker Jérémie doesn’t acquire the business that was run by his... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer on his apocalyptic musical 'The End'Tuesday, 01 April 2025
Joshua Oppenheimer made his name directing two disturbing documentaries, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), that dealt with the aftermath of the brutal anti-communist massacres in Indonesia in 1965-66. Those films addressed... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The SubstanceTuesday, 01 April 2025
“I knew I wanted all the effects practical and made for real. The movie is about flesh and bones, about women’s bodies.”Coralie Fargeat, writer, editor, producer and director of The Substance, is discussing the “visceral journey” and extraordinary... Read more... |
A Working Man - Jason Statham deconstructs villains againMonday, 31 March 2025
The typical Jason Statham movie character – muscular, resourceful, drily humorous – could probably carve an army into mincemeat using a few odds and ends nicked from the local Hobbycraft. In A Working Man, Statham’s second collaboration with writer-... Read more... |
The End review - surreality in the salt mineFriday, 28 March 2025
The End, a quasi-musical from Joshua Oppenheimer, who has previously only produced documentaries, is a surreal examination of a group of individuals isolated from the chaos of a collapsing external world. Sheltered (or trapped?) in an eerily... Read more... |
La Cocina review - New York restaurant drama lingers too longWednesday, 26 March 2025
La Cocina is one of those films that cuts an excellent trailer, succinctly delivering just enough characters, plot and visual flair to entice an audience that enjoyed recent dramas set in restaurant kitchens like The Bear, Boiling Point and The Menu... Read more... |
Blu-ray: LifeforceTuesday, 25 March 2025
Tobe Hooper changed cinema with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) for pennies in rancid Southern heat, but came closest to a mainstream Hollywood career a decade later, following the hit Spielberg collaboration Poltergeist (1982) with his biggest... Read more... |
Brief History of a Family review - glossy Chinese psychological thriller feels shallowSaturday, 22 March 2025
Brief History of a Family is a psychological thriller with a story familiar to anyone who has seen Ripley, Saltburn or Six Degrees of Separation. A clever young man with low social status infiltrates a far more privileged family, with devastating... Read more... |
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other review - a portrait of photographer Joel MeyerowitzFriday, 21 March 2025
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other is a documentary portrait of photographer Joel Meyerowitz, acclaimed for his pioneering use of colour in the 1960s when only black and white images were taken seriously as an art form. My European... Read more... |
The Alto Knights review - double dose of De Niro doesn't hit the spotFriday, 21 March 2025
The power struggle between New York crime bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello is one of the foundational stories of the American Mafia, though perhaps asking Robert De Niro to play both of them was a trifle over-optimistic. With his track record... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: director François Ozon on 'When Autumn Falls'Thursday, 20 March 2025
François Ozon is France’s master of sly secrets, burying hard truths in often dazzling surfaces, from Swimming Pool’s erotic mystery of writing and murder in 2003 to the teenage boy cuckooing his way into his middle-aged mentor’s life in... Read more... |
