sat 05/04/2025

Film Reviews

Stonehearst Asylum

Nick Hasted

Stonehearst Asylum is bookended by classic Hammer horror scenes. Within minutes of Dr Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess) being dropped off at the titular, fog-bound mansion by a swiftly exiting coach and horses, he meets a full-blooded Gothic gang: stiff-backed asylum overlord Dr Lamb (Ben Kingsley), his leering henchman Mickey Finn (David Thewlis), and beautiful, sexually terrified Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale).

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Avengers: Age of Ultron

Nick Hasted

Joss Whedon’s Avengers sequel loses much of the original’s exhilarating freshness. It begins in the middle, doesn’t really end, and regularly makes you wonder just how long the Marvel box-office bonanza can continue. The moment when its Cinema Universe’s exponentially growing complexity slams into entropic reverse, as happened to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original comic-book vision, is plainly visible on the horizon.

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A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

Kieron Tyler

If A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence induces reflections on the nature of existence, the resultant mood could initially be very glum indeed. Swedish director Roy Andersson’s meditation is the self-declared “final part of a trilogy about being a human being”. It opens with three vignettes focusing on unexpected deaths and is, overall, grey in tenor.

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Three Tales, Ensemble BPM, IMAX Science Museum

David Nice

Poised vibrantly enough between the buried-alive monotony of Philip Glass and the dynamic flights of John Adams, Steve Reich’s Three Tales deserves a special place in music-theatre history ("opera" it is not).

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The Falling

Kieron Tyler

The pupils at a girl’s school are afflicted by fainting. It’s spreading. A teacher is affected too. The epidemic began after Lydia and Abbie's friendship has irrevocably ended. Lydia became the first to faint. The school’s headmistress, Miss Alvaro, is determined to ignore what’s going on and ascribe it to baseless hysteria. The stern teacher Miss Mantel is equally unyielding. When medical examinations are finally undertaken, no causes are determined.

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Exit

Tom Birchenough

Taiwanese director Chienn Hsiang has given his lead actress Chen Shiang-chyi a role of rare complexity in Exit, and she dominates this bleakly naturalistic slice-of-life film completely.

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The Decent One

Jasper Rees

Remember the Hitler diaries? Stern and the Sunday Times were so eager for them to be true they went ahead and published even after historian Hugh Trevor Roper had changed his mind about their authenticity. Such was the hunger for stories about Nazis. It’s still there, but Die Welt was on firmer ground when – to accusations of sensationalism – last year it published extracts from the cache of letters, diaries and memos in the hand of Heinrich Himmler.

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Child 44

Adam Sweeting

"There is no murder in paradise" is the official line of the authorities in 1950s Russia, but nevertheless Child 44 is the blood-drenched tale of a hunt for a mass-murdering paedophile in Stalin's deathly shadow.

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A Little Chaos

Ellin Stein

We’ve waited 33 years since Peter Greenway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract for another film combining romance, intrigue and 17th century landscape gardening. Now we have one, and it couldn’t be more different.

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The Salvation

Emma Simmonds

Boasting one of the most appealingly eclectic casts in recent memory, The Salvation – from Dogme 95 director Kristian Levring – might have hoped to emulate the success of Sergio Leone's Italian-infused approach by bringing a Danish flavour to traditional western proceedings.

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Glassland

Katherine McLaughlin

The burden of responsibility weighs heavily on a young man struggling to deal with his mother’s alcoholism, in Gerard Barrett’s powerful and poignant second feature. Jack Reynor, who so impressed in Lenny Abrahamson’s What Richard Did, turns in a nuanced and moving performance as a son driven to desperate measures in order to survive. Barrett empathises how difficult it can be to get by when you don’t have a regular income, or indeed plentiful cash to throw at your problems.

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John Wick

Emma Simmonds

This shrewdly assembled, often near-monochrome actioner injects pathos from the off and mirrors the melancholic outlook of its grief-ravaged protagonist, played by Keanu Reeves, who dials down the befuddlement and proves rather endearing. Directed by stuntmen Chad Stahelski and (an uncredited) David Leitch, it's a lovingly crafted, pleasingly characterful effort that delivers impactful, imaginatively executed thrills.

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Force Majeure

Tom Birchenough

The fault-lines of human relationships are tested in Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure, and prove much more fraught than the physical threat inherent in the film’s glorious alpine landscapes. Its opening scenes capture a Swedish couple, on a skiing vacation in the Alps with their two young children, having their photographs taken by a resort snapper: as they readjust their poses, it seems like a search for a depiction of the perfect family.

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Jauja

Demetrios Matheou

In the past decade or so the Argentine director Lisandro Alonso’s minimalist masterworks have earned him an ardent, if particular following. With Jauja he’s moved beyond his comfort zone, by using professional actors for the first time and with more dialogue than in all his previous combined. The result is at once his most accessible film and his most mysterious, which is quite some trick. And it confirms his status as one of contemporary cinema’s great artists.

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Good Kill

Adam Sweeting

When President Obama took office in 2009, he was riding a wave of idealistic expectations of a superior brand of politics and even a better kind of world. That all looks ludicrous now of course, and one of the lasting stains on his reputation is likely to be the way the USA has ramped up its campaign of drone strikes under his leadership.

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Lost River

Kieron Tyler

Ryan Gosling throws a lot at his first film as director but Lost River is a sign he has found a single discipline which can accommodate many of his scattershot tendencies. He does not, though, find a place for his own musical output in the avowedly arty Lost River.

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