Film
DVD/Blu-ray: The Winslow BoyTuesday, 25 February 2020
Though set in a handsomely-realised 1912, many of The Winslow Boy’s period details seem disconcertingly contemporary, from aggressive tabloid journalists doorstepping an unfortunate family to boorish behaviour in the Commons. There’s a very funny... Read more... |
Berlinale 2020: My Salinger Year review - 70th edition of the festival opens in styleMonday, 24 February 2020
There’s an undeniable romance to mid-Nineties New York. Absent of the chirp of mobile phones, or the swirl of social media, it comes across as a more halcyon age, closer to the Forties than the Noughties. It makes the perfect setting for Berlin... Read more... |
Midnight Family review - a thrilling documentary set in Mexico CitySaturday, 22 February 2020
“It’s cool to see a car crash or a gunshot wound, it’s exciting.” Emergency medical technician Juan Ochoa, 17, loves his work, which is just as well because he doesn’t always get paid.Luke Lorentzen’s award-winning documentary (he directed, produced... Read more... |
Little Joe - trouble in the greenhouseFriday, 21 February 2020
Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner’s disquieting fifth feature, and her first English language one, Little Joe is a sci-fi drama that ponders the tangled choices faced by many modern women – Kubrickian though it is in its immaculate... Read more... |
The Call of the Wild review - how big-hearted Buck became leader of the packFriday, 21 February 2020
Jack London’s original novel was a brutal and Darwinian account of a dog's life in the Klondike during the gold rush at the end of the 19th century. Chris Sanders’s film, on the other hand, with a screenplay by Michael Green, is a family-friendly... Read more... |
Greed review - so-so satire of the über richThursday, 20 February 2020
Steve Coogan’s long partnership with director Michael Winterbottom is probably best known for The Trip and its spin-offs, involving Coogan’s comic culinary excursions alongside Rob Brydon. But for its serious undercurrents and disreputable... Read more... |
Blu-ray: 8 ½Tuesday, 18 February 2020
8 ½ is one of the classic films about the art of cinema. There is something about the make-believe of movies, and our buying into the dreams they foster, which suggests reflection and self-referencing, as if films offered a mirror to our inner lives... Read more... |
First Love review - Miike delivers thrills and spillsSaturday, 15 February 2020
He's one of Japan's foremost directors, and if you’ve witnessed one of his films before, you know what to expect from a Takashi Miike yakuza film. High-octane, boundary pushing fun from first frame to last. And that’s exactly what First Love is.The... Read more... |
Sonic the Hedgehog review - stuck in first gearFriday, 14 February 2020
An early trailer for this adaptation of the ‘90s games franchise caused Cats-like horror at its overly humanoid Hedgehog. Rather than the former film’s risky freak-show, though, this diligently redesigned Sonic is the most safely saccharine family... Read more... |
Emma review – lustrous but far from definitiveThursday, 13 February 2020
The decade is kicking off with the revisiting of old classics. That’s not a bad pursuit, with new audiences in mind, though these days there’s a reasonable expectation of a shot in the arm, a contemporary spin, a fresh perspective. Greta... Read more... |
Oscars 2020: a 'Parasite' love-in caps a night of firstsMonday, 10 February 2020
The 92nd Academy Awards saved its surprises for a final stretch that saw Parasite make history as the first foreign language film ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture, pipping to the post the presumptive favourite, the World War One drama 1917 (... Read more... |
Dolittle review - a star is boredSunday, 09 February 2020
“I knew I shouldn’t have let monkeys read the contract,” Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr.) mutters. The star should have read the script of his first post-Marvel vehicle more closely, too, before taking on the role which previously sank Rex Harrison’s... Read more... |
