Film
Doctor Sleep review - heartfelt return to the Overlook HotelWednesday, 30 October 2019
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining ended in ice, Stephen King’s in fire which consumed the Overlook Hotel. King’s frightening, emotionally rich novel was written by an alcoholic about an alcoholic, Jack Torrance, and his suffering family. Kubrick’s film... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Fuller at FoxTuesday, 29 October 2019
This new Eureka! boxset of 4K and 2K restorations provides ample evidence as to why Samuel Fuller was venerated by such a wide range of film-makers, including Godard, Wenders, Scorsese and Tarantino. Often characterised as a purveyor of pulp... Read more... |
The Last Black Man in San Francisco review - gentle gentrification bluesSunday, 27 October 2019
San Francisco has rarely looked more unattainably golden than in Joe Talbot’s Sundance prize-winning gentrification parable. Jimmie (Jimmie Fails) once belonged inside the city’s Californian Dream, symbolised for him by the grand Victorian-style... Read more... |
By the Grace of God review - a dark, meticulous drama from François OzonSaturday, 26 October 2019
This is a departure in every sense for François Ozon. The prolific French director has established himself as a master of ludic style in past dramas played out by predominantly female casts, the exceptions, among them his sad black-and-white period... Read more... |
The Addams Family review - more treat than trickFriday, 25 October 2019
Starting life as a comic strip in 1938, The Addams Family seems to have reinvented itself for every generation. It’s the story of an odd-ball family from ‘The old country’ (where that is geographically located is by-the-by), who love the grim and... Read more... |
Monos review - teenage guerrillas raising havocThursday, 24 October 2019
In the opening scene of Alejandro Landes’s strange, beautiful but finally unsatisfying Monos, eight teenage guerrillas are playing football blindfold on a high mountain plateau. Why the blindfolds? Perhaps to warn us not to expect any light to be... Read more... |
Terminator: Dark Fate review – look who's backThursday, 24 October 2019
Sentient machines have taken over the Earth. The leader of the human rebellion is so effective that a robotic ‘terminator’ is sent back in time to ensure he’s never born. A guardian follows, to ensure he is. We’ve been here before. Even in the... Read more... |
Black and Blue review - police thriller aims high and missesThursday, 24 October 2019
Police corruption has fuelled many a Hollywood thriller, but sadly Black and Blue is no Training Day or The Departed. Naomie Harris plays US Army veteran turned rookie cop Alicia West, just three weeks into a career with the New Orleans police... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Legend of the Witches & Secret RitesTuesday, 22 October 2019
The British Film Institute’s excellent Flipside strand resurrects neglected or marginalised UK movies, many of them reflecting the social flux of the 1960s and 1970s. Malcolm Leigh’s Legend of the Witches (1970, 85 mins) and Derek Ford’s Secret... Read more... |
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil review - fantasy follow-up falls flatSaturday, 19 October 2019
Angelina Jolie is back again with those cut-glass cheekbones and ink-black wings, reprising her role as the self-proclaimed ‘Mistress of Evil’, in Joachim Rønning’s nauseating sequel to the 2014 live-action spin on Sleeping Beauty. As the... Read more... |
Non-Fiction - adultery spices up digitisation dramaFriday, 18 October 2019
It isn’t provable whether adultery is more accepted in French bourgeois life than in that of other countries, but French films often suggest it’s nothing to get in a lather about. Olivier Assayas’s Non-Fiction, in which three of the four main... Read more... |
Zombieland: Double Tap review - dead dull redoThursday, 17 October 2019
Another unnecessary sequel: we’re used to this sort of thing. The film knows it, too, as lead dork Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) meekly thanks the audience during the opening credits: “There are lots of options when it comes to zombie entertainment, so... Read more... |
