Film Reviews
Hilma review - biopic of the Swedish abstract artist Hilma af KlintFriday, 28 October 2022
The artist Hilma af Klint, born in 1862, was way ahead of her time. A Swedish mystic who believed that spirits were guiding her hand, she was a contemporary of Kandinsky and Mondrian but her abstract art remained unrecognised. She didn’t fit in to the male-dominated art world. Read more...
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Vesper review - impressively art-directed sci-fi filmMonday, 24 October 2022
Vesper is a piece of arty European sci-fi, filmed in the forests of Lithuania (homeland of co-director Kristina Buozyte) and set in a dystopian future conjured up by its French co-director Bruno Samper (a "digital experience designer"). The two collaborated in 2012 on Vanishing Waves, which was the first Lithuanian sci-fi film to play in the US, won awards on the festival circuit, and came with quite a lot of explicit erotica. Read more... |
Decision to Leave review - sly, slow-burning love and deathSunday, 23 October 2022
In Park Chan-wook’s strange Cannes prize-winning thriller, a husband is discovered mangled beneath a mountain, and pretty widow Seo-rae (Tang Wei) isn’t noticeably upset. Read more... |
The Banshees of Inisherin review - stellar turns from Brendan Gleason and Colin FarrellFriday, 21 October 2022
Previous works by screenwriter-director Martin McDonagh, which include In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, might give you an inkling of the perverse and tantalising mindset that lies behind The Banshees of Inisherin… but then again, perhaps not. You could call it a drama, or a comedy or a tragedy. You might even call it a parable. Read more... |
London Film Festival 2022 - the winners and the losersFriday, 21 October 2022
The London Film Festival ended with the announcement of assorted prizes, all well-deserved. Read more... |
Hopper: An American Love Story review - a dry view of a much richer subjectTuesday, 18 October 2022
This rather disappointing documentary about the great American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) has such a dry parade of experts and such a slow linear narrative that it leaves plenty of time to be frustrated by all that’s been left out. Read more... |
London Film Festival 2022 - women's voices powerfully to the foreMonday, 17 October 2022
Coming towards the end of the year, the London Film Festival generally has a “the best of the rest” feel to it, offering an excellent overview of the year’s releases. And what this edition shows is an encouraging, and very satisfying expression of women’s growing empowerment outside and within cinema. Read more... |
Halloween Ends review - the final cutMonday, 17 October 2022
It doesn’t really end till the last dollar’s earned. But David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy, and Jamie Lee Curtis’s signature role, draw to an eventually satisfying close here. Read more... |
All That Breathes review - intensely moving nature documentarySaturday, 15 October 2022
This extraordinarily moving film made history when it became the first documentary to win the top non-fiction awards at both Sundance and Cannes. All that Breathes is the second film directed by Shaunak Sen, shot in Delhi in 2019/2020 during the violence that followed the Citizenship Amendment Act Read more... |
London Film Festival 2022 - supermodels, juntas and toxic dust cloudsThursday, 13 October 2022
There were decidedly mixed, north-south emotions on the film festival circuit last week: just as the latest edition of the BFI London Film Festival opened, administrators announced the immediate closure of its illustrious UK cousin, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, along with two of Scotland’s most beloved cinemas. Read more... |
The Lost King review - fact or fiction?Tuesday, 11 October 2022
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”. Read more... |
Amsterdam review - Christian Bale lights the way into a fuzzy misfire's kind heartSunday, 09 October 2022
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. Read more... |
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris review - Lesley Manville as a Fifties charlady with a heart of goldSaturday, 01 October 2022
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. Read more... |
Remote review - an irredeemably silly first featureSaturday, 01 October 2022
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. Read more... |
Blonde review - Marilyn Monroe thrown to the wolvesFriday, 30 September 2022
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. Read more... |
In Front of Your Face review - a day in the lifeWednesday, 28 September 2022
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. Read more... |
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