film directors
The Day After I'm Gone review - a subtle portrayal of a grieving father and his teenage daughterThursday, 18 June 2020
Yoram (Menashe Noy), a vet in a Tel Aviv safari park, knows how to treat a sick jaguar (startling to see such a magnificent beast in an oxygen mask) but he has no idea how to comfort his troubled 17-year-old daughter Roni (a powerful Zohar Meidan).... Read more... |
The King of Staten Island review - Apatow's best work in a decadeWednesday, 10 June 2020
The master of crowd-pleasing comedy, Judd Apatow, returns with another on-brand tale of arrested development with The King of Staten Island. While it's near his signature anarchic charm, this comedy-drama shows that even a veteran director/... Read more... |
Krabi, 2562 review - a trance-like visitationFriday, 29 May 2020
Have you ever visited a destination you saw on film, only to realise it’s not quite how you imagined? Filled with tourists, the scars of mass visitation, and caught between its own culture and staying commercially attractive. The Thai city of Krabi... Read more... |
The High Note review - Tracee Ellis Ross shines in so-so music dramedyThursday, 28 May 2020
Nisha Ganatra’s musical dramedy, penned by first time screenwriter Flora Greeson, isn’t going to win any prizes for originality and is almost unforgivably corny. But the feel-good vibes and winning combination of Tracee Ellis Ross and Dakota Johnson... 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 County review - Icelandic drama from the director of 'Rams'Thursday, 21 May 2020
Like Rams before it, the ice-glazed hillsides and stark ochre grasslands of northern Iceland are the backdrop for Grímur Hákonarson’s third feature The County, a rural drama that explores the murkier side of local politics.Inga (Arndís Hrönn... Read more... |
Romantic Comedy review - a not-so-guilty pleasureSaturday, 09 May 2020
Only those who really love you can deliver the hard truths, and for filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey, that one love is romantic comedies. Better known as one half of band Summer Camp, Sankey is a self-confessed romcom expert, having watched nearly every... Read more... |
The Perfect Candidate review - seeking status for women in SaudiSaturday, 28 March 2020
Saudi director Haifaa Al Mansour is back on home territory with her new film, and you’ll recognise much here from her characterful 2012 debut Wadjda, itself the first-ever feature to emerge from her home country. That was about challenging the... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Kansas CityTuesday, 24 March 2020
After Robert Altman re-established his critical reputation with The Player in 1992, he directed nine more films – including two of his most ambitious multiple-character works, Short-Cuts (1993) and Gosford Park (2001).In terms of notable speaking... Read more... |
Director Marjane Satrapi: ‘The real question is do you like everyone? No? So, why should everyone like you?’Friday, 20 March 2020
Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-born French filmmaker, has a reputation that precedes her. Her upbringing was the subject of the acclaimed films Persepolis (2007) and Chicken With Plums (2011). Persepolis won the Cannes Jury Prize, two César awards and... Read more... |
The Truth review - a potent Franco-Japanese pairingWednesday, 18 March 2020
It may offer veteran French star Catherine Deneuve as substantial and engaging a role as she has enjoyed in years, but the real surprise of The Truth is that it’s the work of Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda. The director, whose Shoplifters took the Palme... Read more... |
And Then We Danced review - glorious Georgian gay coming-of-age taleWednesday, 11 March 2020
The final sequence of Levan Akin’s coming-of-age drama And Then We Danced is as gloriously defiant a piece of dance action as anything you’ll remember falling for in Billy Elliot.Merab, the film’s youthful dancer protagonist (played by Levan... Read more... |
