British film
Days of the Bagnold Summer review - wry suburban dramaSaturday, 06 June 2020![]() Simon Bird's feature film debut as a director is a gentle, warm-hearted look at a mother and son's strained relationship as they are forced to spend the summer holidays together when the teenager's dad cruelly cancels a trip to see him and his... Read more... |
Women Make Film: Part Two review - two steps forward, one step backFriday, 22 May 2020![]() The second half of Mark Cousins’ documentary on films by women filmmakers starts with religion; it ends with song and dance. This is a second seven-hour journey through cinema. It reconfirms Women Make Film as a remarkable feat of excavation and... Read more... |
Women Make Film: Part One review - a mesmerising journey of neglected filmThursday, 21 May 2020![]() Equally ambitious in scope as his 900min ode to cinema The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Mark Cousins’ latest work, Women Make Film, is a fourteen-hour exploration of the work of female film directors down the decades.Cousins’... Read more... |
The Whalebone Box review - documentary through unreliable surrealismWednesday, 01 April 2020![]() The UK-wide lockdown has thrown the cinematic release schedule into chaos. Some films are postponed indefinitely, while others have opted for direct digital releases. It’s not ideal for anyone, but in a strange way it may play to The Whalebone Box’s... Read more... |
Run review – wheels on fire in ScotlandSaturday, 14 March 2020![]() Run is the story of disgruntled 36-ish Finnie (Mark Stanley), a big, dour worker in a fish processing plant in the Aberdeenshire port of Fraserburgh – writer-director Scott Graham’s hometown. Long married to his onetime high-school sweetheart Katie... Read more... |
Misbehaviour review - crowd-pleaser tackles Seventies sexismThursday, 12 March 2020![]() Created in the mould of Made in Dagenham and Pride, Philippa Lowthrope offers up a cheery, kitschy British comedy centred around the 1970 Miss World Contest that was disrupted by feminist protests. Leading this crowd-pleaser are... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Last HolidayTuesday, 10 March 2020![]() There’s a scarily prescient scene at the start of Henry Cass’s 1950 black comedy Last Holiday, a village surgery’s waiting room crammed with coughers and wheezers. Poor George Bird (Alec Guinness) is a tad under the weather too, but being mistakenly... Read more... |
Military Wives review - the surprising true story of the women who rocked the chartsThursday, 05 March 2020![]() There’s a lot of plucky British charm to Military Wives, from Peter Cattaneo, the director who won the nation's heart with his debut film The Full Monty over two decades ago. His latest offering, starring Kristen Scott Thomas and... Read more... |
Berlinale 2020: Never Rarely Sometimes Always review - raw and unflinching abortion drama hits homeFriday, 28 February 2020![]() Back in 2017, writer-director Eliza Hittman won over audiences with her beautiful coming-of-age drama Beach Rats. Her latest film, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, is a more quietly devastating drama, shifting the focus away from sexual... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: BaitMonday, 27 January 2020![]() Mark Jenkin’s black and white masterpiece about clashes between incomers and locals in a Cornish fishing village was made on a 1976 clockwork Bolex camera that doesn’t record sound – all that’s added later, including the actors’ voices – and hand-... Read more... |
1917 review – immersive, exemplary war filmThursday, 09 January 2020![]() The greatest war films are those which capture the terrifying physical and psychological ordeal that soldiers face, along with the sheer folly and waste of it all – Paths of Glory, Come and See, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, most... Read more... |
The Runaways review - a road trip worth takingThursday, 09 January 2020![]() Oh how British indies love a road trip. Trekking across the rugged landscape, meeting a colourful cast of characters, realising it’s not the destination but the journey. It takes something special to stand out from the pack. The Runaways, debut... Read more... |
