Film Reviews
Battle of the Sexes review - Emma Stone aces it as Billie Jean KingWednesday, 22 November 2017
This is a heartbreaking week for women’s tennis. The death from cancer of Jana Novotna at only 49 evokes memories of one of Wimbledon’s more charming fairytales. Novotna was a lissome athlete who flunked what looked like her best shot at greatness, tossing away a third-set lead in the 1993 women’s final and then crumpling on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent. Five years later she eventually became the oldest first-time champion. It would make a lovely... Read more... |
Brakes review - dysfunctional relationships laid bareTuesday, 21 November 2017
Breaking up is hard to do, sang Neil Sedaka, and Mercedes Grower plays out that sentiment in a quirky, original and often funny film, which neatly subverts Hollywood romcom tropes. It's an... Read more... |
Heartstone review - huge visuals, close-up performancesSaturday, 18 November 2017
Icelandic writer-director Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson has made an impressive feature debut with this story of crossing the threshold from childhood to young adult experience. Heartstone acutely and... Read more... |
Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool review - Annette Bening mesmerisesFriday, 17 November 2017
Screen biographies are tricky things to pull off when the person portrayed has left behind an indelible screen presence. It was hard to love Michelle Williams dragging up for My Week with Marilyn; Grace of Monaco was Nicole Kidman refracted through the eyes of Madame Tussaud. But Annette Bening is wholly mesmerising in her reincarnation of Gloria Grahame, the ... Read more... |
Good Time review - heist movie with stand-out performance by Robert PattinsonWednesday, 15 November 2017
This is not a movie to see in the front row – intrusive close-ups, hand-held camerawork, colour saturated night shots and a relentless synthesiser score all conspire to make Good Time a wild ride. An unrecognisable Robert Pattinson plays Connie Nikas, a nervy con artist who enlists his intellectually disabled brother Nick in a bank robbery. The heist goes horribly wrong and the camera clings to... Read more... |
The Florida Project - bright indie flick packs a punchSaturday, 11 November 2017
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is a wonderful ode to childhood summers and America’s forgotten class. Read more... |
Professor Marston and the Wonderwomen review - Rebecca Hall to the rescueFriday, 10 November 2017
Wonder Woman was the film that defied all the predictions: a big-budget superhero movie directed by a woman which managed to please not only the feminists and their daughters but also the boys who love DC and Marvel. In its slipstream comes Professor Marston and the Wonderwomen, written and... Read more... |
Paddington 2 review - Hugh Grant’s superior baddie boosts sequelThursday, 09 November 2017
Paddington 2 is that rare thing, a sequel that is more engaging than the original by dint of having a far better baddie. In the first film Nicole Kidman’s villainess was a bleached rehash of Cruella De Ville or Morticia – and it was far from her finest hour. She simply didn't convince as an evil taxidermist intent on giving Paddington a good stuffing. The sequel replaces Kidman... Read more... |
Murder on the Orient Express review - lushly upholstered, lightly remodelled rideFriday, 03 November 2017
Kenneth Branagh, like his Poirot, cares about cutlery. The director and detective’s fastidiousness both find their ideal home on the Orient Express, where waiters measure fork placement with the precision of Poirot’s sacred monster of a moustache. Read more... |
The Killing of a Sacred Deer review - edge-of-seat psycho-thrillerFriday, 03 November 2017
At first glance, the meetings between heart surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) and a 16-year-old boy, Martin (Barry Keoghan), lead one to fear the worst for the kid. Their stilted exchanges in public places, during which the man gives the teen expensive gifts, don’t suggest a family connection, or a mentor-student relationship, but a secret intimacy that can only be, in some way, dreadfully wrong. Read more... |
Ferrari: Race to Immortality review - death and glory in 1950s motor racingThursday, 02 November 2017
And so the mini-boom in motor racing movies continues, this time with a look back at the history of Ferrari and the intense on-track battles of the 1950s, a decade in which the Scuderia won four of its 15 Formula One World Drivers Championships. Read more... |
Call Me By Your Name review - a star is born in a heartbreaking gay romanceFriday, 27 October 2017
It's not every day that an actor breaks your heart playing a character who surrenders his. Read more... |
October, LSO, Strobel, Barbican review - Eisenstein with steel scoreFriday, 27 October 2017
Forget the ersatz experience of Sergey Eisenstein's mighty silent films accompanied by slabs of Shostakovich symphonies composed years later. This collaboration between the London Symphony Orchestra and Kino Klassika is as close as we can ever come to hearing the massive score composed by Austrian-born Edmund Meisel for the greatest of the master's 1920s films. Read more... |
Breathe review - heroic but airbrushed struggle against disabilityThursday, 26 October 2017
It’s a challenge to review this film without resorting to adjectives like “plucky” and “well-meaning”, and its mainstream comfiness made it a strangely cautious choice for the opening night of the recent London Film Festival. Breathe is not... Read more... |
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami review - a slow study of pop’s enigmaWednesday, 25 October 2017
Who is the real Grace Jones? This is the central question that drives Sophie Fiennes’s documentary, Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami. After 115 minutes, you might be less sure of the answer than when you go in. The title is Jamaican for a recording booth’s red light and bread, the substance of life. Read more... |
The Death of Stalin review - dictatorship as high farceFriday, 20 October 2017
Like Steptoe and Son with ideological denouncements, Stalin’s Politburo have known each other too long. Read more... |
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