actors
Graham Fuller
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s semi-satirical new thriller looks back with sorrow and ambiguous nostalgia at the Wild West that Brazil became during the 1964-85 military dictatorship. Mendonça set The Secret Agent during 1977, when he was eight, and he has filtered his memories into its world of casual killings and endemic corruption.Fatalistic in tone, despite its leisurely pace and a gonzo horror interlude, it follows the progress of a fugitive from injustice. Widowed former university professor Armando, a passive protagonist, is portrayed with disarming equanimity but an undertow of sorrow by Read more ...
Justine Elias
When the protagonist of If I Had Legs I'd Kick You hears herself described as "stretchable, like putty”, her whole body stiffens in protest. Driven to near insanity by the demands of her mental health counselling job and her young daughter's mysterious illness, Linda is all raw nerves and quick recoil – a mother on the edge of a nervous breakdown. And who can blame her? Barely a few minutes into the movie, the ceiling of her small flat collapses in a flood of water and plaster, and that's just the start of her travails.In her first feature since Yeast (2007), writer-director Mary Bronstein Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Bart Layton’s class-conscious pulp fiction gives Chris Hemsworth his most convincing lead role since Thor as Mike Davis, an LA jewel thief on one last job while tentatively facing his hollow life. An all-star cast including Marvel compadre Mark Ruffalo, pictured bottom right, and Halle Berry happily sink into character parts to give the familiar heist set-up flesh and bone.Mike’s ice cool hijacking of high-end diamonds along LA's 101 freeway almost gets him a bullet right at the start. His empty, expensive apartment, glum servicing by a prostitute and hand-wringing discomfort on an actual Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Sexual abuse and violence, self-harm and sadomasochism, piss and postpartum blood – Kristen Stewart’s The Chronology of Water doesn’t flinch from showing the indignities, the messiness, and the trauma-induced choices made by its everywoman protagonist during her rocky journey.A rewarding experimental art house indie adapted from the novelist Lidia Yuknavich’s transgressively visceral non-linear memoir, Stewart's first full-length feature as writer-director is filtered through the stream-of-consciousness of Imogen Poots’s Lidia.The mosaicked narrative moves forward from an unfixed perspective Read more ...
Pamela Jahn
Actors who play someone with Tourette syndrome have to take a huge step out of their comfort zone. Robert Aramayo accepted that challenge when he was cast as John Davidson in I Swear. On 30 November, Aramayo's portrayal of Davidson was named 2025's Best Lead performance at the British Independent Film Awards.Davidson is a colourful character, to say the least. Warm and caring, he's also unpredictable, outspoken, and prone to swearing wherever he is. It is one of the most marked characteristics of the condition he's been living with for decades. His Tourette's activism led to Queen Elizabeth Read more ...
theartsdesk
SASKIA BARON1 One Battle After Another2. Sinners3 It was Just an Accident4 Palestine 365 Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight6 April7 Motherboard8 Holy Cow9 The Brutalist10 Pillion It was hard work finding ten films I wholly loved this year, and even then, these have flaws (particularly the last third of The Brutalist). But I’m pleased to find that five of my favourite films were directed by women, each exploring very different genres, and that Sinners and One Battle After Another were such densely visual treats they required repeated viewings. JUSTINE Read more ...