Film
Blu-ray: The Bullet TrainTuesday, 11 April 2023
Last year’s Brad Pitt vehicle Bullet Train was an affable action comedy except in those parts – including the dreadful coda – when it was an insufferably smirky one. Freighted with more thrills, intelligence, gravitas, and social commentary, 1975’s... Read more... |
In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50 review - Robert Fripp's iron clawMonday, 10 April 2023
Whether grinding or eerie, bellicose or plaintive, the exquisite jazz- and classical-infused prog rock dirges disgorged by King Crimson over the last 54 years stand apart from the more accessible sounds made by their illustrious peers, including... Read more... |
Godland review - a sly sagaSaturday, 08 April 2023
Iceland’s soul lies in its interior, a forbidding heartland which overwhelms 19th century Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) on his ill-considered posting to this colonial backwater.Director Hlynur Pálmason showed his talent for snapping... Read more... |
Air review - great fun but no slam dunkFriday, 07 April 2023
All the best sports movies are about more than just sport: the core might be friendship, romance, the battle against discrimination, the importance of following your dreams, of self-realisation and fulfilment, of fighting the corporate machine, of... Read more... |
LOLA review - stylish monochrome drama posits an alternative World War TwoFriday, 07 April 2023
Sometimes one admires a film without wholly loving it because the high level of craft displayed on screen holds at arms’ length emotional engagement with the story. LOLA is that kind of movie – an ingeniously devised tale of time-travel,... Read more... |
Hamlet, Bristol Old Vic On Screen review - faithful capture of a stage performanceThursday, 06 April 2023
This is a Hamlet for fans of speed-dating. It comes in at just over the two-hour mark, which is standard for a feature film. But considering the uncut text runs to four hours, as it did in the 1996 Kenneth Branagh film (and his earlier stage... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Dance CrazeTuesday, 04 April 2023
"We’re not just a dance band, we’ve got things to say.” Pauline Black, lead singer with The Selecter, succinctly pins down what made the era of 2-Tone Records so important to the British music scene at the end of the 1970s.A consortium of bands... Read more... |
In the Middle review - the true grit of grassroots refereesMonday, 03 April 2023
In the Middle profiles 10 football officials who referee and run the line of lower-league games in south-west London and north-east Surrey. Pondering what drives these apparently sane individuals to do such an onerous job, director-producer Greg... Read more... |
Blu-ray: A Woman KillsSunday, 02 April 2023
May 1968. As France’s Fifth Republic shook, radical director Jean-Denis Bonan divided his time in the Paris streets between filming protests and the fictional hunt for a cross-dressing serial killer. A Woman Kills lay unfinished and forgotten till... Read more... |
Law of Tehran review - visceral Iranian police thrillerFriday, 31 March 2023
Here in Europe we mainly see subtle, lyrical Iranian films, targeted at international festivals or art house audiences, so it’s great to get the chance to see Law of Tehran, a gritty and relentless police thriller that was a hit in its home... Read more... |
God's Creatures review - Irish drama with a touch of Greek tragedyFriday, 31 March 2023
There’s something about the Irish coastal village that makes filmmakers see it as a perfect locale for tales of human emotion in extremis, from David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter to Martin McDonagh’s Banshees of Inisherin. Perhaps it’s the... Read more... |
Riotsville USA review - a training scheme with a tragic legacyThursday, 30 March 2023
Sierra Pettengill has made the politest angry film I have seen. It has an incendiary quality that comes precisely from its calm stance towards its material. This is a polemic, but one that burns steadily under the surface and asks the viewer to take... Read more... |
