Film Reviews
Utama review - incandescent portrait of a dying way of life in BoliviaThursday, 24 November 2022
Utama won the World Dramatic Prize at Sundance this year and is tipped for an Oscar nomination, too. The film is set in a remote region in Bolivia’s arid highlands. Its gentle pace and non-professional actors give it a documentary feel but there is real narrative skill deployed. Read more... |
Armageddon Time review - James Gray goes back to skoolFriday, 18 November 2022
Was it lockdown that did it? Forcing filmmakers to sit at home, contemplate their lives, and conclude that just as soon as the masks came off, it was time to shine a light on their youth? Read more... |
Aftersun review - the last good timeFriday, 18 November 2022
The New York-based Scottish writer-director Charlotte Wells's feature debut Aftersun is a sublime example of how an opaque style can be wedded to an ambiguous storytelling technique without cost to psychological truth. Read more... |
The Menu review - Ralph Fiennes stars in culinary black comedyFriday, 18 November 2022
A fine cast, starring Ralph Fiennes as a deranged super-chef along with Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Janet McTeer, Rob Yang and an exclusive restaurant serving horror as a main course – it sounds deliciously promising. But although there are some arresting images, this black comedy doesn’t quite deliver. Read more... |
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever review - expanded Afro-dreams survive a star's deathTuesday, 15 November 2022
Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa dies off-screen of an undisclosed disease, suffering “in silence” notes sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), actor and role as one at the end. Lost after one, uniquely iconic full-length film, recasting and digital resurrection was rejected by shocked writer-director Ryan Coogler, even as he ripped his sequel script up. Read more... |
Living review - Bill Nighy's masterpieceFriday, 11 November 2022
Living begins with a ravishing immersion in vintage footage of a lost world, primary colours popping on a Fifties summer’s day in Piccadilly. Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s opulent score adds to the poignancy of an orderly, comfortable England: the country which has slowed the heartbeat and buried the soul of Williams (Bill Nighy), a civil servant called Mr. Zombie behind his back. Read more... |
My Neighbour Adolf review - this queasy comedy is not what the world needs just nowMonday, 07 November 2022
How many excellent comedies involving the Nazis are there? To Be or Not To Be, The Great Dictator and perhaps The Producers, but Jojo Rabbit was a mess and My Neighbour Adolf is no better. Read more... |
Call Jane review - well-crafted pro-choice dramaSaturday, 05 November 2022
The release of Call Jane could not be more timely, just as the American midterms loom and liberals reel from the overturning of legislation that allow women access to safe and legal abortions in the US. This well-crafted drama tells the true story of a group of women in 1960s Chicago who ran a secret organisation that provided almost 12,000 terminations when to do so was a criminal offence. Read more... |
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... |
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... |
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