Film
Wicked review - overly busy if beautifully sung cliffhangerSaturday, 23 November 2024
"No one mourns the wicked," we're told during the immediately arresting beginning to Wicked, which concludes two hours 40 minutes later with the words, "to be continued" flashed up on the screen. Will filmgoers mourn that they have to wait an entire... Read more... |
Snow Leopard review - clunky visual effects mar a director's swansongSaturday, 23 November 2024
Pema Tseden's final film Snow Leopard is a Chinese Tibetan-language drama that addresses wild animal preservation. It serves as a kind of allegory for the circumstances that preceded the 53-year-old director's death from a heart attack last year. In... Read more... |
Mediha review - a brutalised Yazidi teen comes of age with a cameraFriday, 22 November 2024
The plight of persecuted minority groups around the world seems to be growing worse. As one form of response, a non-fiction film like Mediha works to make vivid the individual stories of people who might otherwise be reduced to statistics from... Read more... |
Blu-ray: PharaohTuesday, 19 November 2024
Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Pharaoh (Faraon) is a state-funded superprodukcja, a 152-minute Polish epic, set, incongruously, in Ancient Egypt. First released in 1966, it wasn’t intended to be an Eastern Bloc copy of Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra; Pharaoh is an... Read more... |
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat review - jazz-themed documentary on the 1960s Congo CrisisSunday, 17 November 2024
The British writer and Africa specialist Michela Wrong recently wrote a whistle-stop summary of the upheavals that afflicted Congo in the early 1960s:“A botched independence swiftly followed by army mutinies and attempted secession by two renegade... Read more... |
Gladiator II review - can lightning strike twice?Sunday, 17 November 2024
It has been nearly 25 years since Russell Crowe enjoyed his Oscar-winning finest hour as Maximus in Ridley Scott’s thunderous epic, Gladiator, and now Sir Ridley has brought us the next generation. Stepping up to the plate is Paul Mescal as Lucius (... Read more... |
ARK: United States V by Laurie Anderson, Aviva Studios, Manchester review - a vessel for the thoughts and imaginings of a lifetimeSaturday, 16 November 2024
Picture this: framing the stage are two pearlescent clouds which, throughout the performance, gently pulsate with flickering light. Behind them on a giant screen is a spinning globe, its seas twinkling like a million stars.Suddenly, this magical... Read more... |
Joy review - the birth pangs of in vitro fertilisationSaturday, 16 November 2024
Marie Curie excepted, movies about female scientists remain scarce, not just because STEM careers and Nobel Prizes still favour men. Now comes the British-made Joy, which explores women’s contributions to a decades-long quest to cure infertility.... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Oblong BoxTuesday, 12 November 2024
The Oblong Box is a phantom 1969 follow-up to Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General, sharing star Vincent Price and much cast and crew, after the brilliant young British director’s OD forced his dismissal days before shooting. It also began... Read more... |
Bird review - travails of an unseen English tweenSunday, 10 November 2024
There’s a jolt or a surprise in almost every shot in Andrea Arnold’s Bird – her most impacted and energised depiction of underclass life yet. Photographed by Robbie Ryan, it’s a visual tour de force, one of the most exhilarating British films of... Read more... |
The Problem With People review - local zeroFriday, 08 November 2024
A quarter of an hour into The Problem With People, there’s a 15-second clip of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero – and it’s the best thing about this spectacularly unfunny comedy co-written by its American star, Paul Reiser (Mad About You, The Kominsky... Read more... |
Anora review - life lesson for a kick-ass sex workerSaturday, 02 November 2024
Anora has had so much hype since it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May that it doesn’t really need another reviewer weighing in. Sean Baker has crafted a high-velocity drama in three acts with a star-making turn by its lead Mikey Madison in the... Read more... |
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