thu 10/07/2025

Film Reviews

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...

A Russian Youth, MUBI review - First World War setting, contemporary orchestra

Tom Baily

Alexander Tolotukhin’s debut film places the viewer into a microcosm of the first world war and frames the experience with a peculiar musical device.

Read more...

The Assistant review - riveting #MeToo drama

Demetrios Matheou

Harvey Weinstein is never mentioned in The Assistant, but the former movie mogul and convicted rapist looms large over this savagely relevant drama, which offers a vivid picture of what life might have been like for every one of the employees – male as well as female, victim or no – trapped in Weinstein’s evil little world. 

Read more...

Ema review - vibrant tale of anarchic mum seeking redemption

Demetrios Matheou

The great Chilean director Pablo Larraín specialises in dark psychological reflections on the past, notably his trilogy of Chilean dictatorship dramas – Tony ManeroPost Mortem and No – and his English-language debut about the personal aftermath of the JFK assassination, Jackie.

Read more...

Extraction, Netflix review - mercenary mayhem

Nick Hasted

This is what Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame co-creator Joe Russo and his Thor, Chris Hemsworth, did next.

Read more...

Sea Fever review - more ooze than aahs

Graham Fuller

When Sea Fever premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, no one could have guessed its story about an Irish fishing trawler attacked by a giant jellyfish would in one respect prove prophetic. 

Read more...

Moffie review - heart rates will rise with Oliver Hermanus’ powerful war film

Joseph Walsh

Oliver Hermanus’ potent fourth feature Moffie certainly has a controversial film title. A homophobic slur, it can be translated from Afrikaans as "faggot".

Read more...

Selah and the Spades, Amazon Prime review - boarding-school cliques go gangster

Markie Robson-Scott

“They always try to break you down when you’re 17,” says queen bee Selah (Lovie Simone) in Tayarisha Poe’s impressive directorial debut. As leader of the Spades, one of the five Mafia-style ruling factions in the exclusive Haldwell boarding-school in Pennsylvania, Selah, with her waist-long braids and inscrutably cool managerial style, seems unbreakable. But not so fast.

Read more...

Earth and Blood, Netflix review - tense and broody thriller ultimately falls short

Adam Sweeting

There are quite a few good things to be said for Julien Leclerc’s Earth and Blood.

Read more...

Cuck review - tediously nihilistic

Matt Wolf

Deep from the heart of Trumpland comes Cuck, a deeply unpleasant film about a totally repellent character.

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Insomnia, Channel 5 review - a chronicle of deaths foretold

A mixture of legal drama, medical mystery and psychological thriller with creepy supernatural overtones, Insomnia sometimes seems to be...

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare's Globe review...

Shakespeare’s Prince Hal may have rejected Sir John Falstaff as a symbol of his misspent...

Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful Symmetry

I met Mark Stewart once. It was on a platform at Clapham Junction, I wouldn’t normally approach a famous person like that, but I felt I had to pay...

First Person: country singer Tami Neilson on the superpower...

I was born Tamara Lee Neilson. I had an Uncle Kenny and an Aunt Dolly (who played guitar and banjo, respectively). I mean, did I really have a...

Album: Gwenno - Utopia

Stylistically, Utopia wears multiple faces. Opening cut “London 1757” drifts by like a twig floating upon an unhurried stream. Next, “...

Live Aid at 40: When Rock'n'Roll Took on the World...

“Bob’s not the kind of guy you can say no to,” said Sting, reminiscing about the origins of 1984’s Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s...

theartsdesk Q&A: actor Emma Mackey on 'Hot Milk...

Emma Mackey might have had her breakthrough role as a teenage tough cookie in Netflix's hit Series Sex Education (2019-20223), but there...

Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-...