fri 29/03/2024

Film Reviews

The Lost King review - fact or fiction?

Veronica Lee

Richard III is a controversial figure, and will remain so after this film, which tells the remarkable story of how Philippa Langley, a woman with no background in academia, archaeology or as a historian, led the search to find the grave of the “usurper king”.

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Amsterdam review - Christian Bale lights the way into a fuzzy misfire's kind heart

Nick Hasted

Amsterdam is a multi-faceted anti-fascist shaggy dog story, like Jules et Jim scripted by an off-form Thomas Pynchon. Though it falters in many major ways, David O. Russell’s not especially funny, tense or well-acted spiritual sequel to American Hustle is carried by an enviable cast and benign, off-kilter charm.

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Mrs Harris Goes to Paris review - Lesley Manville as a Fifties charlady with a heart of gold

Markie Robson-Scott

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, based on Paul Gallico’s 1958 novel, is preposterous.  But it’s as pretty as a pink cloud. The director, Anthony Fabian, knows that in these grim times, escapism is good box office.

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Remote review - an irredeemably silly first feature

Sarah Kent

Remote is Mika Rottenberg’s first feature film. The New York-based artist was commissioned by Artangel, an organisation renowned for its promotion of interesting projects. Support also comes from art institutions across the world – Beijing, Denmark, Korea, Louisiana, Montreal and Stockholm.

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Blonde review - Marilyn Monroe thrown to the wolves

Graham Fuller

Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is an atrocity – a ghoulish biopic of Marilyn Monroe that luxuriates in her maltreatment and misery, culminating in protracted images of the star’s lonely death from barbiturate pills distractedly swallowed like candies and washed down with Scotch in her Los Angeles bungalow.

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In Front of Your Face review - a day in the life

Nick Hasted

Twenty-four hours in the life of a Korean woman, Sangok (Lee Hyeyoung), are caught in scenes which feel like real time in Hong Sangsoo’s latest. Moments and personal connections fall in and out of focus, the film seems sober then drunk. Hong learned from old masters such as Robert Bresson, and there is a similar spiritual focus to objectively small, ineffable moments in his 26th film of a prize-winning career.

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Juniper review - a classic role for Charlotte Rampling

Sebastian Scotney

Juniper provides, above all, an absolutely unforgettable role for Charlotte Rampling. New Zealander Matthew J Saville, who devised the script and directed the film, based her character, Ruth, on his own feisty and well-travelled grandmother, who had led a full life, and then returned home – where she drank substantial quantities of gin every day.

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Don’t Worry Darling review - dystopian thriller dries up in the desert

Demetrios Matheou

Olivia Wilde’s follow-up to her exceptional directorial debut Booksmart has been highly anticipated and, of late, accompanied by a torrent of behind-the-scenes bad press and viral virulence. It would be nice to report that the thriller itself transcends all the noise; but, despite yet another exceptional performance by Florence Pugh, it’s a misfiring, undernourished, disappointing affair.

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Silent Land review - an inconvenient death mars their holiday

Graham Fuller

How people dance always gives them away. Alone on the floor of a Sardinian coastal nitespot in Silent Land, the bourgeois Polish couple Adam (Dobromir Dymecki) and Anna (Agnieska Żulewska) fling themselves around as dementedly as if red ants are swarming on their bodies.

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Bloody Oranges review - a gruesome and gruelling French social satire

Sebastian Scotney

Oh no. Not that orange knife and male genitals thing again. In 1976, Marco Ferreri set La Dernière Femme in Créteil in the outskirts of Paris – I was working in a school there, so the memory does tend to stick – and set out to shock audiences by having the main character, played by a young Gérard Depardieu, cut off his life expectancy with the aid of a Moulinex electric kitchen knife.

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Funny Pages review - comic-book confidential

Nick Hasted

Shortly after the art teacher who thinks he’s a genius jumps on a table naked to be sketched, only to meet a sticky end, high school senior Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) sets out to start his brilliant career as an underground cartoonist.

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Crimes of the Future review - Cronenberg looks back

Nick Hasted

Crimes of the Future is a nostalgic return to classic Cronenberg, a comforting catalogue of body horror and fleshy biosynthesis, paranoid plots and shadowy cabals. Sharing a title with his 1970 debut, the director is still fascinated by our physical adaptation to future shocks.

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See How They Run review - a whodunit pastiche set in Fifties London

Markie Robson-Scott

A starry cast headed by Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell doesn’t quite manage to bring this lavish, light-hearted period pastiche to life, though it looks good – nice cars, lovely costumes, a quasi-Wes Anderson vibe – and there are mild chuckles to be had.

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Blu-ray/4K Ultra HD: The Piano

Markie Robson-Scott

Jane Campion’s enigmatic, triple-Oscar-winning film looks as beautiful as it did when it was released almost 30 years ago. Holly Hunter (you can’t help thinking she’s been underused ever since, give or take her performance in Campion’s Top of the Lake) is magnificent as the black-haired Ada, a mysteriously mute Scot who is sold by her father to frontiersman Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill) and joins him as his wife in the wilderness of 19th-century New Zealand.

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Three Thousand Years of Longing review - be careful what you wish for

Saskia Baron

Before there was cinema, there was story-telling around the fire with those who could spin the best yarns, conjure the most vivid visions, winning the love of their audience. George Miller has been bringing innovative and entrancing stories to the screen ever since his debut with Mad Max in 1979, and has never limited himself to one genre.

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The Forgiven review - the shelterless sky

Nick Hasted

John Michael McDonagh’s acerbic tragedy of manners and morals sees West meets East, in a literal car crash of sloppy behaviour and messy intentions.

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