Film Reviews
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... |
Dina review - a poignant treatTuesday, 17 October 2017
Director Dan Sickles has known Dina her entire life. He knows her engaging personality, and he knows her tragic past. It’s the former which he and co-director Antonio Santini feel is worth celebrating in this Sundance award-winning documentary. Dina is a 48-year-old widow who views the world... Read more... |
LFF 2017: Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool / Professor Marston and the Wonder Women reviews - stellar turns by Annette Bening and Rebecca HallSaturday, 14 October 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 far from Nicole Kidman’s finest hour. Read more... |
LFF 2017: Mindhunter / My Generation - Fincher comes to Netflix, Caine does Swinging LondonFriday, 13 October 2017
They’re all going into TV nowadays, and here amid the cinematic runners and riders at the LFF is David Fincher directing Mindhunter. Read more... |
Loving Vincent review - Van Gogh biopic of sorts lacks language to match its visualsFriday, 13 October 2017
Loving Vincent was clearly a labour of love for all concerned, so I hope it doesn't seem churlish to wish that a Van Gogh biopic some seven or more years in the planning had spent more time at the drawing board. Read more... |
The Snowman review - Michael Fassbender can't save Harry HoleThursday, 12 October 2017
The crime novels of Jo Nesbø are rampaging Nordic psycho-operas. The author's Oslo detective Harry Hole is a lofty alcoholic who takes an outrageous pummelling in his pursuit of deranged serial killers. His many adventures fill the crime shelves in bookshops with their fat spines in flashing yellow upper case, but until now he's been kept from the screen. Read more... |
LFF 2017: Blade of the Immortal / Redoubtable - Samurai slasher versus the Nouvelle VagueThursday, 12 October 2017
This is the 100th feature film by Takashi Miike, Japan’s fabled maestro of sex, horror and ultra-violent Yakuza flicks, and here he has found his subject in Hiroake Samura’s Blade of the Immortal manga comics. Manji (Takuya Kimura) is a veteran Samurai haunted by the cruel murder of his sister Machi, but saved from death himself by the “bloodworms” which were fed to him by a mysterious veiled crone and have rendered him immortal. Read more... |
LFF 2017: The Shape of Water review – outsider s.f. and inter-species sex from del ToroWednesday, 11 October 2017
Fish out of water come in various guises in Guillermo del Toro’s Cold War fable, shown at London Film Festival. Read more... |
LFF 2017: Last Flag Flying review - anti-war film without a biteTuesday, 10 October 2017
Richard Linklater’s sort-of sequel to one of the great American films of the Seventies, shown at London Film Festival, stars Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell and Laurence Fishburne as old Vietnam buddies reunited as America is embroiled in another futile war... Read more... |
LFF 2017: Good Time review - heist movie with standout performance by Robert PattinsonMonday, 09 October 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, shown at London Film Festival, 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... Read more... |
LFF 2017: Journey's End review - classic play becomes cracking filmSaturday, 07 October 2017
There have been several film and TV versions of RC Sherriff’s World War One play since it debuted on the London stage in 1928, but Saul Dibb’s new incarnation, shown at London Film Festival, is testament to the lingering potency of the piece. Read more... |
On the Road review - engrossing music documentary with a sly B-sideFriday, 06 October 2017
Michael Winterbottom has always been a mercurial director, moving swiftly between genres, fiction and documentary, keeping us on our toes. But with On the Road it’s time to mark the tiniest of trends. 24 Hour Party People is one of the best films about the... Read more... |
The Glass Castle review - Woody steals the film by a wide marginFriday, 06 October 2017
People who live in glass castles might be wary of throwing stones. That clearly was not the case with American magazine journalist Jeannette Walls, who made of her often harrowing childhood a best-selling memoir that has found its inevitable way to the screen. A would-be Daddy Dearest with a hefty dollop of Captain Fantastic thrown into the mix, what would seem to be a star vehicle... Read more... |
LFF 2017: Breathe review - overdosing on good intentionsThursday, 05 October 2017
The curtain-raiser for the 61st London Film Festival was Breathe, not only Andy Serkis’s debut as a director, but also a film based on the family experiences of its producer, Jonathan Cavendish. Read more... |
Blade Runner 2049 review - powerful but needs more soulThursday, 05 October 2017
Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner from 1982 stands as an all-time sci-fi classic, so anybody trying to make a sequel (even 35 years later) needs galaxy-sized vision, an army of high-powered collaborators and balls of steel. Is director Denis Villeneuve the man for the job? Read more... |
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