sat 08/02/2025

Film reviews, news & interviews

Bring Them Down review - ramming it home in the west of Ireland

Markie Robson-Scott

“You know what they say: where there’s livestock, there’s dead stock,” says Jack (a brilliant Barry Keoghan). Never a truer word. There’s an awful lot of dead and maimed stock – sheep, to be precise – in Christopher Andrews’ gory, gloom-ridden directorial debut. Animal lovers will want to avert their eyes. The film is undeniably powerful, with fine performances, but the unremitting violence ends up feeling cartoonish and empty.

September 5 review - gripping real-life thriller

Demetrios Matheou

There’s a common understanding about journalists, especially ones at the top of their game, that they’re flying by the seat of their pants – propelled by adrenalin, deadlines, ambition and, just occasionally, righteousness.

Blu-ray: Stray Dog

Nick Hasted

Kurosawa’s 1949 thriller probes post-war morality in a Tokyo whose ruins and US occupation mostly remain just out of shot, in a heatwave causing...

Hard Truths review - a bravura, hyperreal...

David Nice

A colleague once told me that I shouldn’t take Mike Leigh’s films with contemporary settings as slices of everyday life. He was right: they’re...

Saturday Night review - a dizzying 90-minute trip...

Helen Hawkins

“A countercultural sketch show full of unknowns, with no script, no structure.” The verdict of NBC’s head of talent about the embryonic Saturday...

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By the Stream review - enigmatic Korean drama

Markie Robson-Scott

Hong Sang-soo's 32nd feature: Seoul campus life and love with plenty of booze

Flight Risk review - the sky's the limit for Michelle Dockery and Mark Wahlberg

Adam Sweeting

Mel Gibson's airborne thriller is fast and furious

Presence review - Soderbergh's haunted camera

Nick Hasted

A ghost story from the ghost's point of view eavesdrops on a fractured family

The Brutalist review - we're building to something

James Saynor

An epic of American dreaming that baffles and mesmerises

William Tell review - stirring action adventure with silly dialogue

Justine Elias

The Swiss folk hero gets an epic update

Blu-ray: Mikey and Nicky

John Carvill

Elaine May's edgy 1976 crime drama deglamorises the gangster archetype

David Lynch: In Dreams (1946-2025)

Nick Hasted

The director, who has died aged 78, rewired cinema with nightmare logic, an underground ethos and weird, wondrous innocence

A Complete Unknown review - how does it feel?

Adam Sweeting

Timothée Chalamet brings it all back home as Bob Dylan

Vermiglio review - a simple tale, simply but beautifully told

Helen Hawkins

Maura Delpero’s award-winner salutes the world of her childhood as it ebbs away

The Second Act review - absurdist meta comedy about stardom

Sebastian Scotney

French A-listers puncture their profession in a hall of mirrors

Maria review - Pablo Larraín's haunting portrait of an opera legend

Adam Sweeting

Angelina Jolie puts body and soul into her portrayal of Maria Callas

Babygirl review - would-be steamy drama that only flirts with transgression

Helen Hawkins

Nicole Kidman gets hot and bothered about a sexy intern’s power plays

It's Raining Men review - frothy French comedy avoids dating-app reality

Markie Robson-Scott

Laure Calamy shines as a dentist whose marriage is in trouble

A Real Pain review - Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin take a Holocaust tour of Poland

Adam Sweeting

It's part comedy, part road movie and part psychotherapy session

Blu-ray: The Hop-Pickers

Graham Rickson

Ground-breaking and colourful Czech musical

Nickel Boys review - a soulful experiment

Nick Hasted

Pulitzer-winner becomes an immersive elegy to black teenage crime and punishment

Best of 2024: Film

Theartsdesk

theartsdesk's movie critics pick their favourites from the last 12 months

Best of 2024: Blu-ray

Graham Rickson

The pick of the year's releases: films spanning decades, continents and genres

Nosferatu review - Lily-Rose Depp stands out in uneven horror remake

Harry Thorfinn-George

Robert Eggers leaves his mark on adaptation of classic, but it’s not always for the best

Blu-ray: Hitchcock - The Beginning

Graham Fuller

A box set shows how Alfred Hitchcock embraced the sound revolution – pathologies intact

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl review - an old foe returns

Graham Rickson

Stop-motion animation on an epic scale

Blu-ray: Three Wishes for Cinderella

Graham Rickson

Witty, engaging Czech fairy tale with an appealingly feisty heroine

Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes review - a Hollywood legend, warts and all

John Carvill

A documentary portrait of Bogie toes the official line but still does him justice

Sujo review - cartels through another lens

James Saynor

A surprisingly subtle narco pic from Mexico

Footnote: a brief history of British film

England was movie-mad long before the US. Contrary to appearances in a Hollywood-dominated world, the celluloid film process was patented in London in 1890 and by 1905 minute-long films of news and horse-racing were being made and shown widely in purpose-built cinemas, with added sound. The race to set up a film industry, though, was swiftly won by the entrepreneurial Americans, attracting eager new UK talents like Charlie Chaplin. However, it was a British film that in 1925 was the world's first in-flight movie, and soon the arrival of young suspense genius Alfred Hitchcock and a new legal requirement for a "quota" of British film in cinemas assisted a golden age for UK film. Under the leadership of Alexander Korda's London Films, Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) is considered the first true sound movie, documentary techniques developed and the first Technicolor movies were made.

Brief_EncounterWhen war intervened, British filmmakers turned effectively to lean, effective propaganda documentaries and heroic, studio-based war-films. After Hitchcock too left for Hollywood, David Lean launched into an epic career with Brief Encounter (pictured), Powell and Pressburger took up the fantasy mantle with The Red Shoes, while Carol Reed created Anglo films noirs such as The Third Man. Fifties tastes were more domestic, with Ealing comedies succeeded by Hammer horror and Carry-Ons; and more challenging in the Sixties, with New Wave films about sex and class by Lindsay Anderson, Joseph Losey and Tony Richardson. But it was Sixties British escapism which finally went global: the Bond films, Lean's Dr Zhivago, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music made Sean Connery, Julie Christie and Julie Andrews Hollywood's top stars.

In the 1970s, recession and the TV boom undermined cinema-going and censorship changes brought controversy: a British porn boom and scandals over The Devils, Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange. While Hollywood fielded Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese epics, Britain riposted with The Killing Fields, Chariots of Fire and Gandhi, but 1980s recession dealt a sharp blow to British cinema, and the Rank Organisation closed, after more than half a century. However more recently social comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Full Monty, and royal dramas such as The Queen and The King's Speech have enhanced British reputation for wit, social observation and character acting.

As more films are globally co-produced, the success of British individual talents has come to outweigh the modest showing of the industry itself. Every week The Arts Desk reviews latest releases as well as leading international film festivals, and features in-depth career interviews with leading stars. Its writers include Jasper Rees, Graham Fuller, Anne Billson, Nick Hasted, Alexandra Coghlan, Veronica Lee, Emma Simmonds, Adam Sweeting and Matt Wolf

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