mon 23/12/2024

Film Reviews

The Vast of Night review - perfectly paranoid

Graham Fuller

The Vast of Night’s premise scarcely guarantees originality.

Read more...

Krabi, 2562 review - a trance-like visitation

Owen Richards

Have you ever visited a destination you saw on film, only to realise it’s not quite how you imagined? Filled with tourists, the scars of mass visitation, and caught between its own culture and staying commercially attractive. The Thai city of Krabi is one such location, made famous by such films as The Beach and The Man with a Golden Gun.

Read more...

The Uncertain Kingdom review - Britannia agonistes

Graham Fuller

The Uncertain Kingdom is a VOD anthology of 20 short films, 10 directed by women, comprising a tapestry of life in – and, in one case, outside – Brexit-era Britain. Though hope, humour, and whimsy were threaded into the project, its dominant fabric is grey.

Read more...

The High Note review - Tracee Ellis Ross shines in so-so music dramedy

Joseph Walsh

Nisha Ganatra’s musical dramedy, penned by first time screenwriter Flora Greeson, isn’t going to win any prizes for originality and is almost unforgivably corny. But the feel-good vibes and winning combination of Tracee Ellis Ross and Dakota Johnson are still likely to win audiences over.

Read more...

Have a Good Trip, Netflix review - a breezy journey into the mind

Owen Richards

Don’t do drugs, kids. For the past 50 years, that’s been the consistent message. But how much of what we know about psychedelics is just fearmongering? Do you really want to jump out of a window? Will you permanently lose your mind?

Read more...

Women Make Film: Part Two review - two steps forward, one step back

Jill Chuah Masters

The second half of Mark Cousins’ documentary on films by women filmmakers starts with religion; it ends with song and dance. This is a second seven-hour journey through cinema.

Read more...

Women Make Film: Part One review - a mesmerising journey of neglected film

Joseph Walsh

Equally ambitious in scope as his 900min ode to cinema The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Mark Cousins’ latest work, Women Make Film, is a fourteen-hour exploration of the work of female...

Read more...

The County review - Icelandic drama from the director of 'Rams'

Joseph Walsh

Like Rams before it, the ice-glazed hillsides and stark ochre grasslands of northern Iceland are the backdrop for Grímur Hákonarson’s third feature The County, a rural drama that explores the murkier side of local politics.

Read more...

Reborn review - horror on the Hollywood skids

Nick Hasted

The Frankenstein-style, electrical storm-sparked resurrection of a dead baby in a hospital morgue, and her theft by its creepy attendant, is followed by a homage to Stephen King’s supernaturally potent teenagers, from Carrie to Firestarter, in a threadbare horror with consistent, curious ideas about its own B-movie realm.

Read more...

In Search of Greatness review - Gabe Polsky's absorbing sports documentary

Veronica Lee

Ask any great sportsman or woman about greatness and they'll tell you it's as much achieved as made; natal talent isn't worth much if you don't practise, or are unfit, or don't have a hunger to win.

Read more...

The Atom: A Love Affair review - hot fusion and cold hearts

Joseph Walsh

It’s fair to say that humanity’s relationship with nuclear energy over the last 50 years has had more highs and lows than a Spanish soap opera. From the Manhattan Project to Hinkley Point, it’s been a controversial technology that has promised both humanity’s salvation and damnation.

Read more...

Romantic Comedy review - a not-so-guilty pleasure

Owen Richards

Only those who really love you can deliver the hard truths, and for filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey, that one love is romantic comedies. Better known as one half of band Summer Camp, Sankey is a self-confessed romcom expert, having watched nearly every film from the 80s onwards.

Read more...

Dangerous Lies, Netflix review - slick silliness

Nick Hasted

When not dipping into its bottomless debts to write Scorsese blank cheques, Netflix tends to favour old-school TV movie potboilers such as this slick, silly thriller, in which young couple Katie (Camila Mendes) and Adam (...

Read more...

The Whistlers review – a smart, self-aware noir concerning a crooked cop

Joseph Walsh

Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu has made a career crafting perceptive and cerebral examinations of his native country. From his 2006 debut 12:08 to Bucharest to The Treasure, they were cerebral films that powerfully embodied the Romanian New Wave. 

Read more...

Camino Skies review - NZ documentary brings no surprises

Markie Robson-Scott

A documentary about six middle-aged Antipodeans, four women and two men, walking the 500 mile pilgrims’ path through France and Spain to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela sounds uplifting, inspiring, even fun. Just the ticket, perhaps, when one's travel horizons are limited. But this soft-focus film fails to dig deeply enough into the lives and motivations of strangers thrown together with nothing much in common apart from grief, and sometimes not even that.

Read more...

Can You Keep A Secret? review - a bumpy ride

Matt Wolf

Featherweight is one thing, brainless is another. Can You Keep A Secret?, the romcom adapted by screenwriter Peter Hutchings from the 2003 novel by Sophie Kinsella, uneasily straddles the two until a conclusion that goes off the rails altogether and tumbles into the ludicrous.

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Death in Paradise Christmas Special, BBC One review - who ki...

Though Death in Paradise is an Anglo-French production filmed in Guadeloupe, in the French West Indies, the Frenchness seems to have...

The English Concert, Bicket, Wigmore Hall review - a Baroque...

Enough is as good as a feast, they say. But sometimes, especially at Christmas, you crave a properly groaning table. At the Wigmore Hall, The...

The Unthanks in Winter, Cadogan Hall review

A suitable place to find yourself out for the winter solstice, buttoning up for the longest night of the year, was at the Cadogan Hall off Sloane...

Albums of the Year 2024: Everything Everything - Mountainhea...

There are some years where my pick for album of the year is obvious; something stands out so...

Music Reissues Weekly: Hawkwind - X In Search Of Space, Dore...

One of last year’s major joys was the box set version of Hawkwind's Space Ritual, an 11-disc extravaganza which made the great live album...

Twelfth Night, Royal Shakespeare Theatre review - comic ener...

It is not just Twelfth Night, it’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will in The Folio,...

Blu-ray: Hitchcock - The Beginning

There's a tension in Alfred Hitchcock’s early films between misogyny and condemnation of...

Albums of the Year 2024: Samara Joy - Portrait

From placing first in the Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Jazz Competition in 2019 to being a triple Grammy winner, Samara Joy’s rise has been...