Film
DVD: Blood and GloryFriday, 13 April 2018
George Orwell’s maxim that sport is war minus the shooting never loses its currency. This summer it may acquire more when the football squads of the pampered west head for Russia. Historically, it applies to a small sub-genre of films about the... Read more... |
Custody review - unflinching and masterfulTuesday, 10 April 2018
Divorce proceedings turn sour in this devastating debut from writer/director Xavier Legrand. Using the full palette of human behaviour, Custody expertly balances high tension and grounded realism to create a timely and lingering film.We start at a... Read more... |
DVD/Download: Lies We TellTuesday, 10 April 2018
The story behind the making of first-time director Mitu Misra’s Lies We Tell is often easier to make sense of than what happens in the film: Misra realised the project with money from his double-glazing business and plenty of bull-headed persistence... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: An Actor's RevengeSaturday, 07 April 2018
Japanese director Kon Ichikawa’s An Actor’s Revenge is something of a one-off. Even in the context of the prolific director’s career variety, it’s an unusually stylised and visually captivating story of high artifice – there’s rich melodrama in its... Read more... |
120 BPM review - stirring portrait of French activism in the age of AIDSFriday, 06 April 2018
Activism is back with a vengeance in our parlous political age, so what better time to welcome 120 BPM as a reminder of an impulse that has never truly gone away? A Grand Prize jury winner at Cannes last May and the recipient of multiple awards in... Read more... |
Wonderstruck review - beautifully designed but emotionally unengagingFriday, 06 April 2018
What is it about Brian Selznick’s ornate illustrated fictions that leads good directors to make bad films? Turning The Invention of Hugo Cabret into Hugo was a near disaster for Scorsese, and now comes Todd Haynes’s stifling... Read more... |
Sweet Country review - hell in the OutbackWednesday, 04 April 2018
Recently the world has been entertained by the shameless amateur theatricals from some of Australia’s lavishly-paid cricketers, but Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country transports us back to a harsher, crueller Australia, where men might have... Read more... |
Isle of Dogs review - canine caper with a messageFriday, 30 March 2018
This isn't a feature about London's former docklands (although much of it was made in a studio nearby), but rather Wes Anderson's second foray into stop-motion animation (after 2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox) and a quiet hymn to two of his... Read more... |
Journeyman review - Paddy Considine wins on pointsFriday, 30 March 2018
Boxing movies are often about redemption in the ring. From Somebody Up There Likes Me to last year’s Bleed for This via Rocky, the story stays the same: boxer seeks peace though punching. In Journeyman, Paddy Considine travels along a different path... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Derek Jarman Collection, Vol One 1972-1986Friday, 30 March 2018
This BFI boxset of Derek Jarman films from the first phase of his career, brilliantly curated by William Fowler, is an exemplary package: a treasure trove of extras accompanies his first six features, here presented in re-mastered form, and a... Read more... |
Ready Player One review - Spielberg goes back to the futureThursday, 29 March 2018
Suddenly Steven Spielberg movies are plopping off the production line like Ford Fiestas or Cadburys Creme Eggs. It seems like only seconds ago that we were greeting The BFG and the breast-beating earnestness of The Post, and now the director comes... Read more... |
The Islands and the Whales review - masterful, sensitive eco-documentaryWednesday, 28 March 2018
A feature-length documentary on whaling in the Faroe Islands: you might think you can see it unfolding already. Hardy Viking fishermen battling the elements, gruesome killings of majestic sea creatures, implied or outright condemnation of the... Read more... |
