wed 02/04/2025

Film Reviews

Bank Job review - an inspirational look at finance

Sarah Kent

A fun film about finance – really? From the very first frame I was hooked on this can-do documentary; it’s that good. A young family – parents, Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell, two kids and two dogs – gather at the front door of their Victorian terraced house in Walthamstow and grin sheepishly to camera.

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Dark Days, Luminous Nights, Manchester Collective, The White Hotel, Salford review - a sense of Hades

Robert Beale

Did you wonder what all those creative musicians and artists did when they couldn’t perform in public last winter? Some of them started making films.

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A Quiet Place Part II review - noise abatement sequel

Graham Fuller

Fourteen months after the Manhattan premiere of John Krasinski's A Quiet Place Part II – and three years after his taut, spare original spawned the most suspenseful sci-fi horror franchise of recent times – the movie is setting post-pandemic box office records.

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Blu-ray: Jungle Fever

Saskia Baron

Thirty years since its original release, Jungle Fever appears on Blu-ray for the first time, courtesy of the British Film Institute. Some aspects of the movie have aged well – it’s electrifying to revisit Samuel L Jackson’s breakthrough performance as a crack addict plumbing new depths to feed his habit. But other aspects haven’t fared so well, primarily the script’s sexual politics and the casting of Wesley Snipes as the (anti) romantic male lead.

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First Cow review - beautifully realised frontier drama

Demetrios Matheou

Kelly Reichardt is one of America’s most distinctive directors, whose meticulously detailed, character and place-driven dramas have a lowkey vibe that belies their impact.

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Frankie review - dying for nuance

Graham Fuller

American filmmaker Ira Sachs excels at crafting throughtful relationship dramas in which middle-class characters confronted with crises or unanticipated realisations gain valuable emotional knowledge. His best works – Forty Shades of Blue (2005), Keep the Lights On (2012), and Little Men (2016) – demonstrate an evenness and maturity rare in the rough and tumble of indie cinema.

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Cruella review - fabulous fashions, creaky narrative

Adam Sweeting

Is Cruella the escapist blockbuster the Covid-blighted world has been waiting for? Well, it’s a feast for the eyes but 20 minutes too long, and for an origin story of the despicable Cruella De Vil of The Hundred and One Dalmations fame, it lacks the killer instinct when it comes to the crunch.

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My New York Year review - lacklustre portrait of an ingenue

Saskia Baron

This pallid chick flick limps out on release having changed its title since its Berlinale 2020 debut; in the US it's known as My Salinger Year, but perhaps market research in Blighty decreed that name-checking the author of The Catcher in the Rye wouldn't play as well here.

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Those Who Wish Me Dead review - Angelina Jolie battles baddies and blazes in Montana

Adam Sweeting

With a track record which includes both Sicario movies, Hell or High Water and Wind River, Taylor Sheridan packs some muscle in the action-thriller department, though Those Who Wish Me Dead can’t match those previous highlights.

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Nomadland review - on the road in the American West

Markie Robson-Scott

Fern (a luminous Frances McDormand) used to work in HR. Now, aged 62, she’s harvesting sugarbeets, hauling rocks, cleaning toilets in a trailer park and doing shifts in an Amazon warehouse. And she’s living out of her camper van, a shabby, lovingly restored RV she calls Vanguard. “I’m not homeless, I’m houseless,” she says, driving through vast Western landscapes under spectacular skies.

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Rare Beasts review - Billie Piper as triple threat

Matt Wolf

Emotions don't come in half-measures in Rare Beasts, with which Billie Piper makes a commendably edgy debut as writer-director onscreen while affording herself a stonking star part.

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Army of the Dead review - triumphant return to zombieland by director Zack Snyder

Adam Sweeting

Zack Snyder’s CV includes such fantastic fare as Watchmen, 300, Man of Steel and his career-launching zombie-fest Dawn of the Dead, so who better to helm a zombies-in-Vegas heist movie?

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The Human Voice review - an intense half-hour that pulls no punches

Sarah Kent

I wonder how many relationships have foundered during lockdown and how many have suffered the humiliation of being dumped over the phone or via social media? 

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Ferry review - the making of a Dutch gangster

Tom Baily

Success for the Belgian-Dutch crime series Undercover has led Netflix to produce an origin story for the show’s drug lord character Ferry Bouman (Frank Lammers). While this may be a dream come true for a portion of the show’s diehard fans, this formulaic movie is stalling, predictable and riddled with every gangster cliché in the book.

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The Woman in the Window review - hitching a ride with Hitch

Adam Sweeting

Darkest Hour may have been director Joe Wright’s finest hour, but we can say for certain that, despite its impressive cast, The Woman in the Window isn’t.

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End of Sentence review - an American father and his estranged son reconcile in Ireland

Markie Robson-Scott

It’s not until the final moments of End of Sentence that Frank (John Hawkes) lets himself laugh – he’s swimming in the icy waters of an Irish lake - and what a relief it is to hear. Icelandic director Elfar Adalsteins’s debut feature (Sailcloth, a wordless short starring John Hurt, won several awards in 2011) is a study in family shame, masculinity and keeping things inside.

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