Film Reviews
Tehran Taboo review - transgressive animationSaturday, 06 October 2018
For all the bleakness of its subject matter, there’s considerable exhilaration to Ali Soozandeh’s animation feature Tehran Taboo. That’s due, in part, to the film’s breaking of many of the official “rules” of Iranian... Read more... |
A Star is Born review - Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga make a compellingly combustible duoFriday, 05 October 2018
"It's the same old story, told over and over forever": So remarks the redoubtable Sam Elliott late in the most recent reboot of A Star is Born, which itself manages to take an oft-told story and reinvent it very much afresh. Read more... |
Kusama - Infinity review - amazing tale of survival against the oddsThursday, 04 October 2018
Wearing a red dress covered in black polka dots and a bright red wig, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama sits drawing, a look of intense concentration on her face. It takes her three days, she says, to finish one of these huge repeating patterns (main picture) and ideas pour out faster than she can realise them, even though she works all day, six days a week. Read more... |
The Wife review - Glenn Close deserves better from her latest Oscar bidFriday, 28 September 2018
Writers need to write, or so goes the unimpeachable argument that underpins The Wife, which is being strongly touted as the film that may finally bring leading lady Glenn Close an Oscar in her seventh time at bat. Read more... |
Black 47 review - a gripping and unusual dramaThursday, 27 September 2018
Even for those with only a passing acquaintance with Irish history, the Famine – or the Great Hunger – looms large, when British indifference to the failed potato crop in large parts of Ireland resulted in the deaths or emigration of nearly a quarter of the country’s population in the 1840s and 1850s. Read more... |
Skate Kitchen review - sisterhood in the skate parkThursday, 27 September 2018
“Let’s get a clip, Long Island.” One New York skateboarder encourages another, who’s from the ‘burbs, to show off ollies, pop shuvits and kick-flips for a YouTube video. But hang on: “There are too many penises in the way.” This is a posse of young women, a rare sighting in the male world of the skate park. Read more... |
The Little Stranger review - the wrong sort of chillsSaturday, 22 September 2018
Domnhall Gleeson needs to watch it. In Goodbye Christopher Robin he played AA Milne, the creator of Pooh and co. To achieve the correct level of period English PTSD, it was as if he’d folded himself up into a neat pile of desiccated twigs. And now he’s gone and done it again in The Little Stranger, only more so. Read more... |
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. review - not your average popstarSaturday, 22 September 2018
Why is M.I.A. such a problematic pop star? Why can't she just shut up and release a hit? Tellingly, this is the very question the singer poses at the start of Matangi/Maya/M.I.A - a question she's been asked throughout her career, from interviewers to management. Read more... |
Faces Places review - Agnès Varda's enchanted journeyThursday, 20 September 2018
On the eve of her tenth decade, the marvellous Agnès Varda embarked on the enchanted journey that we see in Faces Places. For admirers of the great French director – of whom there are a great many: indeed, it is hard not to be won over by her resolutely independent, profoundly... Read more... |
Never Here review - conceptual art may damage your healthWednesday, 19 September 2018
Beware the hidden powers of the cellphone. Read more... |
Wajib review - poignant, profound humanismSaturday, 15 September 2018
Annemarie Jacir’s third feature may have picked up a subtitle, “The Wedding Invitation”, for international distribution, but the key to her intimate portrait of Palestinian life seen through a... Read more... |
Lucky review - fabled character actor stars in his own obituaryFriday, 14 September 2018
Harry Dean Stanton died in September last year aged 91, and will forever be remembered as the embodiment of the lean, lonely, laconic stranger, a man of few words but imbued with an enigmatic allure. This film, the directorial debut of character actor John Carroll Lynch, has been conceived as both homage to and starring vehicle for the departed Stanton, but doesn’t quite hit the spot on either count. Read more... |
The Seagull review - Chekhov classic gets the all-star treatmentSaturday, 08 September 2018
A starry and mostly American cast does well by The Seagull, Chekhov's eternally moving portrait of egomania run wild and self-abasement turned tragically inward. Combining two major players from the New York theatre world in director Michael Mayer (London's Funny Girl, Broadway's Hedwig and the Angry Inch) with a Tony-winning... Read more... |
The Miseducation of Cameron Post review - learning the right wayFriday, 07 September 2018
This is Desiree Akhavan’s second film, following on from her rather ironically titled Appropriate Behaviour of 2014. That was a coming-out drama about a bisexual, Iranian-American woman, whose story closely reflected the director’s own – and ... Read more... |
Under the Wire review - risking everything to tell the world the truthWednesday, 05 September 2018
She was “the most important war correspondent of her generation”, says Sean Ryan, her editor at The Sunday Times. And her colleague Paul Conroy describes her as “a complete and utter one-off – exceptionally driven, with a real sense of purpose”. These tributes are for Marie Colvin, who was killed by President Assad’s forces on February 22 2012. Conroy was on assignment with her when she died. He was badly wounded in the attack, but escaped from... Read more... |
Yardie review - Idris Elba shoots straight in his directorial debutFriday, 31 August 2018
The first significant British film to explore the influence of Jamaican sound systems in London was Babylon. Shot in 1980, its street patois was deemed impenetrable enough to merit subtitles. Times change. Read more... |
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In the 1970s, the Mancunian stand-up Colin Crompton had a famous routine about Morecambe. He characterised Morecambe as “a sort of cemetery with...