tue 07/10/2025

Film Reviews

Urchin review - superb homeless drama

Demetrios Matheou

Urchin feels like a genuine moment in British cinema. Thematically, it offers a highly original, thoughtful, affecting account of the endless cycle of misfortune and institutional ineptness that can trap someone in homelessness. At the same time, it marks the coming of age in the careers of two brilliant young talents. 

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Mr Blake at Your Service review - John Malkovich in unlikely role as an English butler

Markie Robson-Scott

This genial oddity – its pithier French title is Complètement Cramé, meaning something along the lines of completely burnt out – stars John Malkovich and Fanny Ardant and is directed by best-selling author Gilles Legardinier, who adapted it from his own novel. Its goofiness works, some of the time, partly because of Malkovich’s French, which is fluent yet delivered in a halting drawl with an English/American accent so bad it’s almost good.

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Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight review - vivid adaptation of a memoir about a Rhodesian childhood

Helen Hawkins

Fans of Alexandra Fuller’s fine memoir of her childhood in Africa may be wary of this film adaptation by the actress Embeth Davidtz, her directing debut. But they should not be. This is an equally fine, sensitive rendering of Fuller’s story, with a miraculous performance by seven-year-old Lexi Venter at its heart.

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One Battle After Another review - Paul Thomas Anderson satirises America's culture wars

Graham Fuller

Paul Thomas Anderson’s frantic One Battle After Another is a storm warning for a fascist America and both a lament and a rallying call for revolutionary fervour.

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Steve review - educator in crisis

Justine Elias

What's going wrong with teenage boys and young men? Like the lauded Netflix series Adolescence, Steve – the second film collaboration between star-producer Cillian Murphy and director Tim Mielants – takes a bold and intriguing approach in its search for answers.

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Can I get a Witness? review - time to die before you get old

Markie Robson-Scott

Some time in the not too distant future, there are only two films on offer: Duck Soup, and, if you order the DVD in advance, Zoolander. And you have to watch them in a museum.

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Happyend review - the kids are never alright

James Saynor

Perhaps only in Japan might it be thought the height of delinquency for a bunch of schoolkids is to spend the night sneaking back to school, climbing in and hanging out in a music room. Happyend, a Japanese teen-rebellion story, shows its central posse of disaffected sixth-formers carrying out just such a wild and crazy stunt near the start.

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Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review - comedy rock band fails to revive past glories

Adam Sweeting

That difficult second documentary – or if you will, “rockumentary” – seems to have been especially challenging for Spinal Tap, since it arrives no less than 41 years after its predecessor, This Is Spinal Tap. The latter has become renowned as a definitive artefact in rock’n’roll history, a smartly deadpan portrayal of a deeply cretinous British heavy metal band in the throes of a shambolic American tour....

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Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review - an attemptedly elegiac final chapter haunted by its past

Helen Hawkins

It can be a hostage to fortune to title anything “grand”, and so it proves with the last gasp of Julian Fellowes’s everyday story of posh folk at the turn of the 20th century. The Granthams are facing a lowering of their status, and it’s time to move on out. 

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Islands review - sunshine noir serves an ace

Demetrios Matheou

From its ambiguous opening shot onwards, writer/director Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands is a tricksy animal, which doesn’t just keep you guessing about its characters and plot, but about what kind of film it is we’re watching.

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Honey Don’t! review - film noir in the bright sun

James Saynor

The Coen brothers’ output has been so broad-ranging, and the duo so self-deprecating, that critics have long had difficulty getting their arms around them. Telling stories of distemper in the American heartland, with the occasional drive-by hit on Old Hollywood, they defined indie cinema for a generation and then perhaps single-handedly released it from its ghetto and merged it into the mainstream. 

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The Courageous review - Ophélia Kolb excels as a single mother on the edge

Markie Robson-Scott

“I never abandoned you,” says Jule (Ophélia Kolb; Call My Agent!) to her 10-year-old daughter Claire (Jasmine Kalisz Saurer), setting a fairly low bar as far as motherhood is concerned.

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Little Trouble Girls review - masterful debut breathes new life into a girl's sexual awakening

Helen Hawkins

Taking its title from a Sonic Youth track whose lyrics describe someone who seems good on the outside but is bad inside, this debut feature from the Slovenian director Urska Djukic is a small miracle. Its 90 minutes deftly draw us into the psychology of pubescent teens in a fresh, often funny, always transporting way. 

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Young Mothers review - the Dardennes explore teenage motherhood in compelling drama

Markie Robson-Scott

“Not even an animal would do what she did.” Jessica (Babette Verbeek) is speaking about her biological mother, who abandoned her when she was a baby, leaving her to grow up in care. Now Jessica, a teenager, is pregnant, just as her mother was, and is obsessed with finding her. She demands answers, as well as love.

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Oslo Stories Trilogy: Sex review - sexual identity slips, hurts and heals

Nick Hasted

Two chimney sweeps sit by a window. The boss (Thorbjørn Harr) recounts a dream meeting with David Bowie, who disconcertingly looks at him like he’s a woman. Funny thing, his friend (Jar Gunnar Røise) replies. Yesterday, a male client asked him to have sex, and he did. It felt good. He hasn’t told anyone else, apart from his wife.

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Sorry, Baby review - the healing power of friendship in the aftermath of sexual assault

Markie Robson-Scott

“I have a baby in me,” says Lydie (Naomi Ackie; Mickey 17). “What? Right now?” says her friend Agnes (Eva Victor), who may not be entirely thrilled at the news. “Are you going to name it Agnes?”

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