Film
The Drifters review - lovers-on-the-run with little moral depthFriday, 02 April 2021
The Drifters remakes the romance crime genre by placing the main themes of rebellion and freedom in the context of the race and migration divisions of present day Britain. It is a noble mission for a debut by British director Benjamin Bond.... Read more... |
The Mauritanian review – moving 9/11 dramaThursday, 01 April 2021
Whether he’s making documentaries or dramas, director Kevin Macdonald has an eye for the bleak moments in our history, and a dynamic way of recreating them, from the Oscar-winning doc Four Days in September, about the Munich massacre, to the... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Silent ActionTuesday, 30 March 2021
Silent Action makes for a snappier title than the original La polizia accusa: il Servizio Segreto uccide, though the frenzied action in Sergio Martino’s 1975 thriller is anything but silent. The film opens with the grisly murders of three Italian... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Romeo is BleedingSunday, 28 March 2021
The problem with much neo-noir is that it’s ersatz – too self referential for its own good. Peter Medak’s noir is as dark as it gets, but the hell he portrays is a shade too knowing, tainted with irony and excess.Romeo is Bleeding (1994) showcases a... Read more... |
Memories of My Father review - the richness of childhood, the cruelty of historySaturday, 27 March 2021
Spanish director Fernando Trueba’s Memories of My Father adapts the Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince’s 2006 family memoir, which was published in English as Oblivion: the Spanish-language title of both book and film, El Olvido Que Seremos (“... Read more... |
Stray review - a delightful portrait of a dog named ZeytinSaturday, 27 March 2021
It’s a dog’s life, this lockdown; if only I could meet my friends whenever I want to and roam around freely without obeying these annoying restrictions! Stray is a documentary about the street dogs of Turkey in which film-maker Elizabeth Lo... Read more... |
Six Minutes to Midnight review - Judi Dench retains her dignityFriday, 26 March 2021
It can't be easy maintaining dignity when everyone in your vicinity is losing theirs. But that's the position in which the inimitable Judi Dench finds herself in Six Minutes to Midnight, a bewildering movie in which star and co-author, Eddie Izzard... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Mädchen in UniformTuesday, 23 March 2021
The late Weimar-era film Mädchen in Uniform (1931) was visionary – a delicate Queer love story set in a repressive girls’ boarding school that denounced the Prussian militarist creed as dehumanising. Like The Blue Angel (1930), another German early... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Restless NativesSunday, 21 March 2021
That a film has a cult following doesn’t mean it’s a masterpiece, and 1985’s Restless Natives is sweet but ephemeral, a Scottish crime caper that can’t hold a candle to Bill Forsyth’s sparky debut, That Sinking Feeling. Both are set in a period when... Read more... |
Amber and Me review - sensitive documentary about twin girls, one with Down SyndromeFriday, 19 March 2021
This heartfelt documentary follows twin girls who are just starting primary school. We first meet Amber struggling to pop her head through her shirt, helped by her sister Olivia. Amber has Down Syndrome and everything is just that bit harder... Read more... |
Minari review - a Korean family searches for the American dreamThursday, 18 March 2021
“David, don’t run,” is the refrain that runs through the first scenes of Lee Isaac Chung’s affecting, autobiographical Minari, acclaimed at Sundance, winner of a Golden Globe for best foreign language film (it’s mainly in Korean) and nominated for... Read more... |
Blu-ray: CharadeTuesday, 16 March 2021
Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in Paris in the summer: Charade was the last word in old Hollywood’s glamorous cool. It was almost the last word for Grant, feeling if not looking his age. Its tricksy, trapdoor plot, with a baffled Hepburn hunted for a... Read more... |
