Film
How To Blow Up a Pipeline review - can eco-terrorism be justified?Friday, 21 April 2023
“This was an act of self defence,” is the last message we hear as How To Blow Up a Pipeline approaches the end of its 104-minute span. The speaker, a revolutionary environmental activist called Xochitl, has been arrested for her involvement in the... Read more... |
Blu-ray: WandaThursday, 20 April 2023
In Sight & Sound’s recent Greatest Films of All Time poll, Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970) placed joint 48th with Ordet (1955), just ahead of The 400 Blows (1959) and The Piano (1992). Loden’s existential indie drama about an uneducated working-... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Full CircleTuesday, 18 April 2023
Julia (Mia Farrow) stands jolting and shuddering, a butterfly pattern of blood on her blouse, shocking the ambulancemen on her doorstep. Her nine-year-old daughter Kate, who choked on an apple like Snow White before Julia cut her throat in a... Read more... |
Renfield review - Dracula meets Steptoe and SonMonday, 17 April 2023
Dracula’s fly-eating henchman Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) seeks solace in a self-help group from his co-dependent, fanged boss (Nicolas Cage), in a comic horror action flick which posits the pair as a vampiric Steptoe and Son – though that... Read more... |
Filmmaker Tarik Saleh: ‘A director is at heart an immigrant’Saturday, 15 April 2023
Tarik Saleh was born between two worlds, with a Swedish mum and Egyptian dad. His Egyptian side has inspired his two highest-profile releases.Seedy, sweeping noir epic The Nile Hilton Incident (2017) followed Cairo cop Noredin (Fares Fares) as his... Read more... |
One Fine Morning review - Léa Seydoux stars in Mia Hanson-Løve's poignant love storyFriday, 14 April 2023
In the first scene of Mia Hanson-Løve’s wonderful One Fine Morning, Sandra (Léa Seydoux in a minimal, nuanced performance), is trying to visit her father, Georg (Pascal Greggory), in his Paris flat. But, stuck on the other side, he can’t find the... Read more... |
Loving Highsmith review - documentary focused on the writer's lighter sideThursday, 13 April 2023
Since her death in 1995, Patricia Highsmith has prompted three biographies, screeds of often conflicting psychological analysis and now this documentary from the Swiss-born Eva Vitija. We hear the director say at the outset that by reading her then-... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Bullet TrainTuesday, 11 April 2023
Last year’s Brad Pitt vehicle Bullet Train was an affable action comedy except in those parts – including the dreadful coda – when it was an insufferably smirky one. Freighted with more thrills, intelligence, gravitas, and social commentary, 1975’s... Read more... |
In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50 review - Robert Fripp's iron clawMonday, 10 April 2023
Whether grinding or eerie, bellicose or plaintive, the exquisite jazz- and classical-infused prog rock dirges disgorged by King Crimson over the last 54 years stand apart from the more accessible sounds made by their illustrious peers, including... Read more... |
Godland review - a sly sagaSaturday, 08 April 2023
Iceland’s soul lies in its interior, a forbidding heartland which overwhelms 19th century Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) on his ill-considered posting to this colonial backwater.Director Hlynur Pálmason showed his talent for snapping... Read more... |
Air review - great fun but no slam dunkFriday, 07 April 2023
All the best sports movies are about more than just sport: the core might be friendship, romance, the battle against discrimination, the importance of following your dreams, of self-realisation and fulfilment, of fighting the corporate machine, of... Read more... |
LOLA review - stylish monochrome drama posits an alternative World War TwoFriday, 07 April 2023
Sometimes one admires a film without wholly loving it because the high level of craft displayed on screen holds at arms’ length emotional engagement with the story. LOLA is that kind of movie – an ingeniously devised tale of time-travel,... Read more... |
