Film Reviews
Best of 2018: FilmSaturday, 29 December 2018
While the Academy Awards is still searching for a host, theartsdesk's relatively controversy-free 2018 means we're ready for our end of year tributes. Read more... |
Papillon review - a not very great escapeThursday, 20 December 2018
The story of Henri Charrière’s gruelling ordeal as a prisoner in French Guiana and eventual escape was a bestseller on everyone’s bookshelf in the 1970s. Read more... |
Mary Poppins Returns review - Emily Blunt makes the role her ownWednesday, 19 December 2018
It's perhaps unfair to review a film through the prism of one that predates it by more than half a century, but even fans of Mary Poppins Returns (and I am one of them) can't help doing so. Read more... |
Springsteen on Broadway, Netflix review - one-man band becomes one-man showSaturday, 15 December 2018
When Bruce Springsteen’s one-man show opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre on New York’s West 48th Street in October last year it was only supposed to run for six weeks. Read more... |
Lizzie review - murder most meticulousThursday, 13 December 2018
The story of Lizzie Borden, controversially acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892, has been explored many times on screen and in print (there’s even an opera and a musical version, not to mention the Los Angeles metal band Lizzy Borden). Read more... |
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse review - a new hope for the superhero genreTuesday, 11 December 2018
After Sam Raimi’s original mixed-bag trilogy, Andrew Garfield’s all too familiar outing as the webslinger, and last year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, it would be fair to say we’ve had enough Spider-Man films. Despite the potential fatigue from yet-another-origins story, we now have Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Read more... |
The Old Man & the Gun review - sundown on SundanceFriday, 07 December 2018
Despite having enjoyed a prolific few years in which he has appeared in (among others) All Is Lost, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Truth and Our Souls at Night, Robert Redford has said that The Old Man & the Gun will be his last film role. Read more... |
Disobedience review - tough loveFriday, 30 November 2018
Lesbian love in a closeted Orthodox Jewish North London community suggests a place of barriers and secrets. In adapting Naomi Alderman’s novel Disobedience for producer-star Rachel Weisz, the Chilean-Argentine director Sebastián Lelio might as well have landed on the moon... Read more... |
Three Identical Strangers review - an extraordinary true storyThursday, 29 November 2018
The privileges of writing reviews are very few (it’s certainly no way to make a living these days) but one that remains is the possibility of seeing a film before reading about it. Sometimes it doesn’t matter knowing in advance how a story will play out. It’s probably a good idea to let audiences know that they won’t get child-rearing tips from Rosemary’s Baby. Read more... |
Shoplifters review - deserved Cannes prize winnerSaturday, 24 November 2018
When a film is about a crime family, audience expectations tend to involve mobsters and thrills, but that’s not the territory that Hirozaku Kora-eda is exploring here. Read more... |
The Girl in the Spider's Web review - Claire Foy leathers upThursday, 22 November 2018
The enthronement of Claire Foy has been quite a spectacle. Perhaps some of Her Majesty’s mystique has rubbed off, as she is now entering that territory known to few young actors, where you’ll happily pay to see her in anything. Should that policy extend to her newest incarnation? Read more... |
Siberia review - Keanu Reeves's duff Russian missionMonday, 19 November 2018
It is appropriate that Keanu Reeves sounds especially croaky and muffled throughout Siberia. Business meetings for his character Lucas Hill (a diamond trader) don’t normally involve much talk, just a swift briefcase handover and a confidential handshake. Read more... |
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald review - mischief not quite managedFriday, 16 November 2018
Two years after the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, we return to the Wizarding World once again for the next, somewhat convoluted, chapter in the five planned prequel instalments, with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Read more... |
Suspiria review - kindly, slow-motion grand guignolThursday, 15 November 2018
The first Suspiria was a sensation, and spectacularly, monomaniacally new. Read more... |
Widows review - feminist crime paysMonday, 12 November 2018
Steve McQueen’s progress from video artist to Oscar-winning director has been deceptively smooth. Read more... |
Overlord review - nightmares in NormandySaturday, 10 November 2018
The trailer for Overlord promises havoc, horror, evil, madness, terror and rage, and to be fair it delivers on most of those. Read more... |
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Making Noise Quietly review - poetic if occasionally preciou...
Robert Holman’s 1986 Bush Theatre play – seen most recently in London at the Donmar Warehouse in 2012 – makes for a beautifully acted curio of a...
Prom 1, BBCSO, Canellakis review - space-age First Night
A new commission, a Romantic tone poem and a choral spectacular – standard fare for the First Night of the...
Tell It to the Bees review - taboo love in 1950s Scotland
In Tell It to the Bees, sex is aberrant unless it’s conducted by a straight married couple. Since...
Die Zauberflöte, Glyndebourne Festival review – high jinks i...
Die Zauberflöte rarely attracts the plain cooks of the operatic world....
Pavarotti review - enjoyable but superficial survey of a sup...
One of the most memorable moments in Ron Howard’...
Beuys' Acorns, Bloomberg Arcade London review – not muc...
The City of London is an ecological disaster. Around Bank,...
