Film
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... |
Official Secrets review – powerful political thrillerThursday, 17 October 2019
Early in the political drama Official Secrets, Keira Knightley’s real-life whistleblower Katharine Gun watches Tony Blair on television, giving his now infamous justification for the impending Iraq War, namely the existence of weapons of mass... Read more... |
The Peanut Butter Falcon review - sentimental comedy is so damn heartwarmingWednesday, 16 October 2019
It’s an uncomfortable feeling to find oneself completely at odds with an audience in a cinema, but it happens. The recent London Film Festival screening of The Peanut Butter Falcon came complete with the two lead actors and the co-directors and... Read more... |
LFF 2019: The Irishman review - masterful, unsentimental gangster epicTuesday, 15 October 2019
Time passes slowly and remorselessly in The Irishman. Though its much remarked de-ageing technology lets us glimpse Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) executing German POWs aged 24, none of the gangsters here ever seem young. Everyone is heavy with... Read more... |
LFF 2019: Le Mans '66 review - Matt Damon, Christian Bale and the Ford Motor Company go to warSaturday, 12 October 2019
While recent motor racing movies have been built around superstar names like Ayrton Senna and James Hunt, the protagonists of Le Mans ’66 (shown at London Film Festival) will be barely recognisable to a wider audience. They are Carroll Shelby, the... Read more... |
Gemini Man review - high-concept, high-tech Zen weirdnessFriday, 11 October 2019
Will Smith’s giant hand looms out of the screen towards you, gripping his gun’s trigger with weird realism. Director Ang Lee’s lonely devotion to filming in 120 frames per second 4K 3D, already widely loathed by audiences in less developed form in... Read more... |
The Day Shall Come review – Homeland Security satire lacks biteThursday, 10 October 2019
A new film by Chris Morris ought to be an event. The agent provocateur of Brass Eye infamy has tended to rustle feathers and spark debate whatever he does. His last film, Four Lions, dared to find comedy in Islamic terrorism in 2010,... Read more... |
