Film
Pink Wall review - scattered scenes from a tortuous relationshipSaturday, 14 December 2019
What Jenna (Tatiana Maslany, star of Orphan Black), likes doing is wrangling and coordinating, not creating – she hates that - which makes for a refreshing change in a heroine. Her new boyfriend Leon (Jay Duplass, pictured below, of the Duplass... Read more... |
Jumanji: The Next Level review - raising their gameThursday, 12 December 2019
Two years ago Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle dusted off the Robin Williams vehicle from the Nineties with entertaining results, improving on the original with astute casting, a goofy script and special effects that didn’t take themselves too... Read more... |
Sons of Denmark review - political thriller stirs cauldron of hot-button issuesWednesday, 11 December 2019
The first feature by Copenhagen-born director Ulaa Salim dives boldly into a cauldron of hot-button issues – terrorism, racism, nationalism and fascism. It’s set in 2025, in a Denmark suffering from bomb attacks and violently polarised politics.... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Holly and the IvyTuesday, 10 December 2019
British cinema has done so badly by Christmas that the revival of a film that parses the nature of the festival while mining its potential for sparking family strife is cause for celebration. Long neglected, The Holly and the Ivy (1952) has been... Read more... |
The Cave review - heroic Syrian hospital workersMonday, 09 December 2019
War crimes are war crimes, irrespective of the victims’ ages, gender, or ethnicities, and no one’s torture or murder is more abhorrent than anyone else’s. Yet because children are essentially innocent and incapable of defending themselves, and... Read more... |
Lucy in the Sky review - Portman falls from orbitSunday, 08 December 2019
Best-known for his TV series Legion and Fargo, director Noah Hawley makes the leap to the big screen with an existential space drama based on true events, starring Natalie Portman.During the Apollo 11 space mission, Michael Collins was left in the... Read more... |
So Long, My Son review - an intimate Chinese epicSaturday, 07 December 2019
Two young boys play by the water. Soon, one is dead. This enigmatic tragedy is the core of a four-decade Chinese saga of grief, guilt and love, at once intimately personal and scarred by the state’s grinding turns. Director Wang Xiaoshuai shuffles... Read more... |
Honey Boy review - coming to terms with dadFriday, 06 December 2019
Blue periods can lead to golden streaks. Such is almost the case with Honey Boy, which Shia LaBeouf wrote during a court-ordered stay in a rehab clinic for the treatment of PTSD symptoms. Based on LaBeouf’s upbringing and childhood acting years, the... Read more... |
Ordinary Love review - small but (almost) perfectly formedThursday, 05 December 2019
Amidst the deluge of high-profile year-end releases, it would be a shame if the collective Oscar-bait noise drowned out Ordinary Love, as quietly extraordinary a film as has been seen in some time. Telling of a couple whose marriage is... Read more... |
Motherless Brooklyn review – tic tecThursday, 05 December 2019
Edward Norton has wanted to adapt Motherless Brooklyn since Jonathan Lethem’s acclaimed novel was first published 20 years ago. His film (as producer, writer, director and star) is an obvious labour of love, an evocative, entertaining, old-fashioned... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Moonrise KingdomTuesday, 03 December 2019
Moonrise Kingdom is stuffed with director Wes Anderson’s familiar tropes. Elaborate sets, artfully designed props and Bill Murray all feature, the usual eccentricities tempered by genuine affection for the film’s young heroes. Anderson’s eighth... Read more... |
The Nightingale review – revenge without redemptionMonday, 02 December 2019
Writer-director Jennifer Kent knows that Australia’s colonial past shouldn’t be beautified, and she drives that fact home in every gloom-drenched shot of The Nightingale (her second feature after The Babadook from 2014). This is an immensely... Read more... |
