Film
Mosul, Netflix review - gruelling story of Iraq's Nineveh SWAT teamSaturday, 12 December 2020
It may seem incongruous that a factually-based film about Iraqis battling against murderous Islamic State invaders should have been produced by the Russo brothers, famous for Marvel’s Avengers and Captain America blockbusters. However, Hollywood... Read more... |
The Mole Agent review - leftfield and charming documentaryFriday, 11 December 2020
The Chilean director Maite Alberdi makes warm, witty, empathetic, fly-on-the-wall documentaries, whose subjects are always surprising. Lifeguard, her first, was about a lifeguard working on the most dangerous beach in Chile, who was... Read more... |
American Utopia review - the new age of the concert movieFriday, 11 December 2020
American Utopia is not your average Spike Lee joint. He has teamed up with David Byrne of Talking Heads to make a concert movie based on Byrne’s lauded Broadway show of the same name, which opened in October 2019 in a limited run. After the success... Read more... |
The Midnight Sky review – flawed but moving apocalyptic sci-fiThursday, 10 December 2020
The last time George Clooney was in a space movie, Gravity, he and Sandra Bullock were marooned above Earth and desperate to get home. The Midnight Sky has the opposite dynamic: here Clooney is Earthbound, urgently trying to warn... Read more... |
The Prom review - merry Meryl in middling musicalWednesday, 09 December 2020
Four Broadway denizens resolve to change the world "one lesbian at a time" in the cheerful if often cheesy The Prom, the film adaptation of a recent Broadway musical that continually reminds you of at least a half-dozen similar titles, almost all of... Read more... |
Filmmaker Frank Marshall: 'People don’t understand what geniuses The Bee Gees were'Tuesday, 08 December 2020
Frank Marshall might not be the biggest household name, but his footprint on Hollywood is unrivalled. He has produced hits ranging from Indiana Jones and Back to the Future to Jason Bourne and Jurassic World. He also takes occasional forays into... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Le Cercle RougeTuesday, 08 December 2020
Misdirection is at the heart of Le Cercle Rouge. The Buddhist quote that opens Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1970 thriller – "when men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day… they will inevitably come together in the red circle” – is fake, written by... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The IrishmanSunday, 06 December 2020
The big talking points of Martin Scorsese’s lauded return to the gangster genre, 2019’s The Irishman, were his reunion after 25 years with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, and the state-of the-art “de-aging” process that enabled that pair and Al... Read more... |
Host review - Zoom seance triggers unspeakable consequencesSaturday, 05 December 2020
Lockdowns must be good for something, right? British writer-director Rob Savage (a 2013 Screen International Star of Tomorrow, factoid fans) has made the most of the unwelcome imposition of our first national incarceration by creating a Zoom-powered... Read more... |
Falling review - Viggo Mortensen's powerful directorial debutFriday, 04 December 2020
“California is for cocksuckers and flag-burners. Did they know you were a fag in the army?” Willis (Lance Henriksen; best known as Bishop in Alien) asks his son John (Viggo Mortensen), now living in LA with his husband Eric and their adopted... Read more... |
County Lines review - a scary descent into drug-dealer purgatoryThursday, 03 December 2020
This debut feature by writer/director Henry Blake is a shocking and remarkably assured drama about the “county lines” trade, where children are used as drug traffickers. Using mobile phones, city-based drug dealers employ kids to ferry their product... Read more... |
Mank review – David Fincher’s brilliant, bitter-sweet paean to Hollywood’s Golden AgeWednesday, 02 December 2020
For so much of the year, Tenet was cited as the film that was going to save cinema – the tentpole extravaganza that would draw virus-conscious punters back to the big screen. The assertion was always fanciful, the pandemic being too long a... Read more... |
