Film Reviews
Victim review - timely re-release for attack on homophobiaSunday, 23 July 2017
Victim was released in 1961. Six years would pass before the passing of the Sexual Offences Act cautiously exempted from prosecution men over 20 who had consensual sex in private. Read more... |
Dunkirk review - old-fashioned filmmaking on the grandest scaleThursday, 20 July 2017
What is the Dunkirk spirit? It has been so thoroughly internalised by the national psyche that, 77 years on, it’s as much a brand, a meme or a slogan as the product of a historical fact: that at the start of World War Two 330,000 soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force, cornered on a French beach, strafed and bombed by the Luftwaffe, were ferried to safety by a plucky flotilla of pleasure... Read more... |
David Lynch: The Art Life review - authentic and revealingMonday, 17 July 2017
"You drink coffee, you smoke cigarettes, and you paint. And that’s it." So goes David Lynch’s memorable description of what he calls "the art life" in Jon Nguyen’s frank and engaging documentary. It’s a life that Lynch imagined himself living as a student and a young man – surrounded by the detritus of a disorderly studio, working all hours at his latest visual creation. Read more... |
The Beguiled review - silly but seriously well-madeFriday, 14 July 2017
An isolated girls' school finds its hermetic routine shattered by the arrival of Colin Farrell, who wreaks sexual and emotional havoc as only this actor can. Read more... |
War for the Planet of the Apes review – long on budget, short on ideasTuesday, 11 July 2017
There’s been talk about the way this latest instalment of the rebooted Ape franchise, and the one which brings the story of the brainy messianic ape Caesar full circle, is an allegory of Isis’s onslaught in Iraq or the rise of Donald Trump. Read more... |
The Last Word film review - Shirley MacLaine's spit and vinegar remain intactFriday, 07 July 2017
If you're going to cobble together an entirely pro forma film, it's not a bad idea to give Shirley MacLaine pride of place. At 83, this redoubtable pro is no more capable of falsehood now than she ever was. It means that, although individual moments of The Last Word may find you rolling your eyes, its central performance rivets attention from first to last. Read more... |
Spider-Man: Homecoming review - fresh, funny version of the arachnid avengerWednesday, 05 July 2017
First introduced into the burgeoning “Marvel Cinematic Universe” in last year’s Captain America: Civil War, Tom Holland’s incarnation of Spider-Man is another triumph for this exuberant franchise (even if some might feel a pang for the fine and still-recent pairing of Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone under director Marc Webb's helmsmanship). Read more... |
Baby Driver review - thrill-ride runs out of roadThursday, 29 June 2017
Baby drives like a deranged bullet. Edgar Wright’s “diegetic action-musical” choreographs the bank-heist getaways of angel-faced Baby (Ansel Elgort) as physically exhilarating pure cinema, a rush that’s rare. Read more... |
Risk review - Assange unravelsWednesday, 28 June 2017
Julian Assange’s white hair marks his public persona. To some he’s an unmistakably branded outsider, or a lone white wolf hunting global injustice. Hollywood would cast him as the coolly enigmatic superhero who’s revealed as the supervillain in the last reel. Read more... |
Okja, Netflix review - joyous assault on the meat industryTuesday, 27 June 2017
Is meat murder? Will people eat anything if it’s cheap? Is the taste of bacon really what stops us half the western world turning vegetarian? Okja is a commercial stretch, a partly subtitled children’s fable from South Korea which unstintingly confronts all of these deep moral questions. But it does so in the most – if you will – palatable manner. Read more... |
Souvenir review – Huppert does deadpan like Buster KeatonSaturday, 24 June 2017
Isabelle Huppert isn’t just here for the nasty things in life. Her rape non-victim in Elle was one of the most iconoclastic performances even she’s given, enigmatic yet emotionally rich, rooted and moving. Read more... |
The Book of Henry review - staggeringly awfulFriday, 23 June 2017
It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a movie as staggeringly awful as The Book of Henry. If it was just a touch more shrill it could have qualified as a so-bad-it’s-good camp classic, but unfortunately it teeters this side of tasteful in order to keep its 12 rating. How any studio executive ever read Gregg Hurwitz’s script and thought this was a viable scenario is truly baffling. What terrible atonement for sins in a past life led Naomi Watts to take the lead is another mystery,... Read more... |
Hampstead review - Diane Keaton deserves better and so does LondonThursday, 22 June 2017
Do the makers of the essentially unnecessary Hampstead have a secret vendetta against north London and its citizenry? Read more... |
The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger review - voyages round a giantTuesday, 20 June 2017
“Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.” I’ve quoted these words by John Berger many, many times. They are in my bloodstream, as it were, since they provided me with an explanation for my experience as a young woman in the world. The 1972 television series and accompanying book Ways of Seeing from which they came also... Read more... |
Gifted review - genius in the family genesFriday, 16 June 2017
There’s quite an appealing mini-genre that concerns genius, usually involving mathematics and an outsider who struggles to cope for reasons that include social adaptation (Good Will Hunting), sexuality (The Imitation Game) and mental health (A Beautiful Mind). The clever trick of Gifted is that the genius in question is too young to have any idea of the problems she may face. Read more... |
Churchill review - Winston has smallness thrust upon himFriday, 16 June 2017
He may often be voted Greatest Briton in the History of Everything, but are we approaching peak Winston? Scroll down Churchill’s IMDb entry and you’ll find that he’s been played by every Tom, Dick and Harry in all manner of cockamamie entertainments. Read more... |
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