Film Reviews
The Moor review - Yorkshire chiller is ambitious but muddledSaturday, 15 June 2024
A number of films in recent years have added a distinctly local flavour to the folk-horror genre. Mark Jenkin was inspired by Cornish superstitions in the ghostly Enys Men and Kate Dolan’s underrated You Are Not My Mother was ripe with Irish pagan practices and folk tales. Read more... |
Àma Gloria review - small-scale triumph with a big emotional payloadFriday, 14 June 2024
In Marie Amachoukeli’s Àma Gloria there’s a remarkable performance by a child actor, Louise Mauroy-Panzani. So key is her contribution that It’s fair to say the director couldn’t have delivered the film she had planned without her,. Read more... |
Susquatch Sunset review - nature red in tooth and claw (albeit prosthetic)Friday, 14 June 2024
There’s a category of movies that are best seen having read nothing about them. Susquatch Sunset falls into that blood group as its main pleasure comes from working out quite what's going on. Free of any dialogue, it functions as an oddball parody of a nature documentary as it follows an elusive family of mysterious bipeds over the changing seasons. Read more... |
Wilding review - a life enhancing experienceThursday, 13 June 2024
Imagine you’ve inherited a castle in West Sussex plus five square miles of farmland. You continue the family tradition of mixed arable and dairy farming, but the soil is so depleted that yields decrease, year on year. Even with the help of government subsidies, after 17 years you are £1.5 million in debt. So what to do? Read more... |
Riddle of Fire review - unsubtle but likeable kids' adventure flickSaturday, 08 June 2024
Live-action movies for the under-12 set are rare. Rarer still are those that capture the anarchic spirit of middle-grade children gone wild. Writer-director Weston Razooli made a splash at the Cannes and Toronto film festivals last year with Riddle of Fire, an adventure tale that draws inspiration from Disney’s earnest, spirited TV fare of the 1970s. Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: CabriniTuesday, 04 June 2024
“Begin the mission and the funds will come,” says feisty, tubercular nun Francesca Cabrini (Christiana Dell’Anna; Patrizia in Gomorrah) to Pope Leo XIII (Giancarlo Giannini) in 1889. She specialises in defying expectations, especially when men tell her she should stay where she belongs. She became the first American saint, canonised in 1946. Read more... |
A House in Jerusalem review - a haunted house and countrySunday, 02 June 2024
The Israel-Palestine conflict aptly infuses a haunted house in Muayad Alayan’s story of layered loss. The Shapiro family home in Jerusalem which grieving British-Jewish husband Michael (Johnny Harris) and daughter Rebecca (Rebecca Calder) retreat to as a sanctuary already bears the pain of past Palestinian owners, as ghost stories multiply. Read more... |
The Beast review - AI takes over the job centreFriday, 31 May 2024
Adaptations of Henry James have often failed to click over the years. The author’s private, introspective works – sightseeing trips around people’s souls – seem hard to transpose into a crowded gathering where someone keeps yelling “Action!”. Read more... |
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga review - just as mad without MaxFriday, 24 May 2024
In the way of Batman being overshadowed by his villains, in his last outing, Mad Max: Fury Road, the erstwhile hero of George Miller’s dystopian action series had to take a back seat (literally and metaphorically) to the shaven haired, one-armed, kick-ass powerhouse that was Furiosa. Read more... |
The Beach Boys, Disney+ review - heroes and villains and good vibrationsFriday, 24 May 2024
It was – let’s see – 63 years ago today that Brian Wilson taught the band to play. Fabled for their resplendent harmonies and ecstatic hymning of the sun-kissed California dream, the Beach Boys seemed to represent everything golden and glorious about the mythic American West Coast. If you lived in Detroit or Deptford, it looked like a wonderland indeed. Read more... |
Bermondsey Tales: Fall of the Roman Empire review - dirty deeds done dirt cheapFriday, 17 May 2024
What with the likes of Sexy Beast, Layer Cake, The Hatton Garden Job and the oeuvre of Guy Ritchie, the British gangster movie has become its own quaint little genre, a bit like an offshoot of the Ealing comedy with added thuggery, swearing and arcane London patois. Read more... |
Two Tickets to Greece review - the highs and lows of a holiday from hellWednesday, 15 May 2024
Two women were best friends at school but they haven’t seen each other in years. One is an uptight divorcée, the other a free spirit. They have nothing in common any more but go on holiday to Greece together. A recipe for disaster, or what? Read more... |
Hoard review - not any old rubbishWednesday, 15 May 2024
A visually dazzling, fiercely acted psychological drama with a manic comic edge, Hoard channels an 18-year-old South Londoner’s quest to lay the ghost – or reclaim the spirit – of her long dead mentally ill mother through her sexual pursuit of the 30-ish man she’s infatuated with. Read more... |
Our Mothers review - revisiting the horrors of Guatemala's civil warMonday, 13 May 2024
Director Cesar Diaz’s debut feature film was made on a modest budget and confines its running time to a crisp 78 minutes, but its impact is like being hit over the head with a sandbag. We frequently hear the word “genocide” being bandied about, but Our Mothers revisits a monstrous specimen of it which most of the world has forgotten about. Read more... |
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review - a post-human paradiseSaturday, 11 May 2024
Planet of the Apes is the most artfully replenished franchise, from the original series’ elegant time-travel loop to the reboot’s rich, deepening milieu. Director Wes Ball again offers serious sf, just as much as Dune, considering the consequences of another species’ dominance, and outraged humanity’s resistance. Read more... |
La Chimera review - magical realism with a touch of FelliniFriday, 10 May 2024
Italian director Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders, Happy as Lazarro), ploughs a charmingly idiosyncratic furrow that might be described as magical realism, combining as it does vivid depictions of rural communities with shafts of fantasy and fable. Read more... |
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