Film
The Silent Twins review - the tragic story of the Welsh teens who were sent to BroadmoorFriday, 09 December 2022
The fascinating story of the silent twins, June and Jennifer Gibbons, who were incarcerated in Broadmoor for 12 years for minor crimes, has been told before, several times. There’s a 1986 BBC film by Jon Amiel based on Marjorie Wallace’s book about... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Cat and the Canary (1939) / The Ghost Breakers (1940)Tuesday, 06 December 2022
Paramount added a late “old dark house” mystery comedy to Hollywood’s annus mirabilis of 1939 by teaming Bob Hope with Paulette Goddard in The Cat and the Canary, skilfully directed by Elliott Nugent. The death-trap mansion in the Louisiana bayous... Read more... |
Three Minutes: A Lengthening review - superb portrait of a vanished worldMonday, 05 December 2022
We hear the projector whirr as the mute 16mm film flows through the sprockets and on to the screen. For three minutes and a little longer we watch children and adults spilling out of buildings, intrigued by the novelty of a camera on their streets.... Read more... |
White Noise review - sprawling riffs on love and deathMonday, 05 December 2022
This is Noah Baumbach’s most capacious, overreaching work, corralling Don De Lillo’s novel of catastrophising, neurotic academia into a film jazzily dependent on rhythm, hooked on language and wildly diverse in tone.Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) is a... Read more... |
Directors the Dardenne brothers: 'To be living means to be fragile'Saturday, 03 December 2022
Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have made their home region of Liège the site of excruciating moral crises and crushing injustice. Their 12 masterful, double Palme d'Or-winning films act as parables for the embattled human soul.The... Read more... |
Tori and Lokita review - a masterpiece of humanist cinemaFriday, 02 December 2022
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes are Belgium’s national conscience. The brothers, who have been sharing the roles of writer-director-producer since their first film in 1996, make humanist dramas about desperate people trying to survive in a harsh world... Read more... |
Neil Young: Harvest Time review - a thrillingly intimate fly-on-the-wall documentaryWednesday, 30 November 2022
“You’re filmin’ a movie or something – can you explain this?” the radio DJ turns to Neil Young, a laugh underpinning his question and setting the scene: light, jovial.“We’re just makin’ a film about…” Young pauses for a second. “I dunno, just the... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Son of the White MareTuesday, 29 November 2022
Son of the White Mare (Fehérlófia), a 1981 Hungarian animated epic, defies easy description, Marcell Jankovics’ film blending folklore and psychedelia to startling effect.There’s violence, heartbreak, black humour and romance, all accompanied by... Read more... |
Matilda the Musical review - a dizzying, smartly subversive delightMonday, 28 November 2022
I bow to no one in my affection for Matilda the Musical onstage, which I've loved across multiple iterations, from Stratford-upon-Avon to the West End and Broadway, and numerous cast changes, too.But Matthew Warchus's screen iteration of his Roald... Read more... |
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery review - grand, class-conscious escapismSunday, 27 November 2022
Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel is an even more brightly entertaining puzzle picture, revelling in the old-fashioned glamour of enviably sunny climes and another rogues’ gallery of piquantly deployed film stars. Self-styled world’s greatest... Read more... |
Bones and All review - eat, don't heatSaturday, 26 November 2022
You expect gross-out movies to send your hands flying in front of your eyes. But Luca Guadagnino's ludicrous Bones and All is not just gory but grossly sentimental, too. Reuniting the Italian director with the star of his breakout hit Call Me... Read more... |
Nanny review - no spoonfuls of sugar in this spooky taleSaturday, 26 November 2022
Nanny is being marketed as a horror movie, and arachnophobes should certainly beware, but it’s also a stylish exploration of race and class by African-American writer-director Nikyatu Jusu.Its heroine is Aisha (Anna Diop) a Senegalese graduate... Read more... |
