Film
Hugh Barnes
A Kind of Kidnapping is a low-budget British comedy with a neat premise and satirical view of class and politics in the midst of a cost of living crisis.A young couple struggling to make ends meet and facing eviction from their squalid flat come up with a plan to strike pay dirt by kidnapping a sleazy Tory politician. The only snag is the MP’s wife is so thoroughly sick of his lying and cheating that she declines to pay the ransom, leaving the bungling crooks with a problem – and a hostage – on their hands.The best thing about this film written and directed by DG Clark (How Not to Live Your Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
“There are sex maniacs out there, sodomites, murderers, suicidal people, and communists on the loose! I vote for a curfew!” This fabulous explosion of anxiety, from a teenage girl who we’ve seen beat other young women to a pulp for no good reason, both begs to be quoted, and is indicative of the deep well of ignorant loathing and hypocrisy that informs this very funny, but also deeply serious satirical horror from the gifted Brazilian writer-director Anita Rocha da Silveira. While da Silveira happily wears her influences on her sleeve – Stanley Kubrick, Dario Argento, John Carpenter Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Isabelle Huppert is French cinema’s icon of icy transgression, from Bertrand Blier’s outrageous Les Valseuses (1974) to Paul Verhhoeven’s Elle (2017), in which her character Michéle denies rape’s trauma, instead seeking out her rapist for sadomasochistic sex and mind-games. Huppert was Oscar-nominated for the latter, though she was ultimately too much for Hollywood.Union representative Maureen Kearney, Huppert’s real-life role in her latest film, Jean-Paul Salomé’s La Syndicaliste, was sexually assaulted, scarred and tied up in her home shortly before whistleblowing about secret French Read more ...
Justine Elias
Searching for a coherent narrative thread in David Lynch’s Inland Empire (2006) is probably futile, so it’s best to begin with the movie’s nervy central performance by Laura Dern in multiple, overlapping roles as “a woman in trouble” – the movie’s subtitle. Or maybe many different women in all manner of trouble. In one timeline, Dern plays a battered but defiant drifter, fighting back against years of abuse. In another, she’s an American actress at work on a Southern-fried melodrama called On High in Blue Tomorrows. That movie-within-a-movie’s smarmy Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
British-Moroccan director Fyzal Boulifa’s second feature is a departure from his first, the brilliant and disturbing Lynn + Lucy of 2020. That was set on an Essex housing estate; this one takes place in Morocco.Like Lynn + Lucy, it’s beautifully paced, outstandingly fresh and original, with some of the same themes of class, shame and identity, and takes its title from Vincent Sherman’s 1950 film noir starring Joan Crawford as a woman who claws her way out of poverty.Boulifa follows a close-knit mother and son. Sleeping on the same small mattress, they're constantly on the move, barely getting Read more ...
Saskia Baron
This loose-limbed movie follows Shabu, a 14-year-old boy who is growing up on the public housing estate known as the Peperklip (Paperclip) in Rotterdam. It’s the summer holidays and he’d like to hang out with his girlfriend and his mates, but first he’s got to sort out some trouble. Shabu’s beloved grandma flew home to see her family in Suriname, and the lad took her car for a joyride and trashed it. Now he has to work out how to make enough money so his grandma can replace her car when she gets back.Making and selling frozen popsicles is one enterprise he tackles. We watch him concoct a Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
After 27 years and half a dozen instalments of a franchise predicated on its ability to up the ante on itself to ever more dizzying heights of ingenious, character-driven, genuinely heart-in-mouth action, the killjoy or cynic may well be lining up an alternative title for the latest: Mission: Impossible – Anti-climax. But they would never get to use it. Not a chance. Dead Reckoning – Part One lives up to its fanfare, and then some. Its near three-hour running time barely has a loose thread, as it seamlessly stitches tricksy, diabolical, topical intrigue with pathos, comedy Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Writer-director Pat Jackson’s Western Approaches (1944), a Technicolor tour de force partly shot in turbulent seas by Jack Cardiff, is a stirring World War II story documentary that demonstrates the bravery, resilience, selflessness, and collective spirit of men of the British Merchant Navy during the Battle of the Atlantic. The merchantman Jason having been torpedoed by a U-boat, its 22 survivors (including one seriously wounded) struggles towards Ireland’s west coast – 18 days away if the rate of 60 miles in 24 hours is maintained, though neither its rations nor its radio will hold out Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) revived Thirties adventure serials’ simple thrills, a George Lucas notion adrenalised by Spielberg. Its hero Indy Jones wasn’t built for depth or pathos, and the struggle to find reasons for his return notoriously sank Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and left this final chapter in production purgatory till Harrison Ford was 79.Ford wanted this sequel, disagreeing with Spielberg on its premise, and driving it to completion when the director gave up. Indy’s humanity wholly resides in his lopsided, ironic grins at peril, rugged but Read more ...
James Saynor
In French, this film is called Un petit frère (“A little brother”), and for once it may be that a film’s English title is an improvement on the original. The fitful and fragmented second feature by Léonor Serraille is about a multi-tasking migrant from Ivory Coast and her two sons, whom we drop in on at intervals across 20 years or so, beginning in 1989.They start out with relatives in Paris as Rose (Annabelle Lengronne) rallies ten-year-old Jean (Sidy Fofana) and five-year-old Ernest (Milan Doucansi) to do well at school. Two other children have been left behind in Abidjan. Rose must also Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
On the face of it, La Syndicaliste (aka The Sitting Duck) is a conspiracy thriller that runs along familiar tracks: clever woman begins to suspect dirty dealings at a very high level in the high-stakes industry she works for and lands herself in a dangerous mess. There are anonymous phonecalls, menacingly bright headlights behind her… Think Silkwood in stilettos.But the face of this film is Isabelle Huppert, whose looks – never more flawlessly presented than here – are impossible to upstage. However hard the film tries to assure us it is documenting a true tale of grim corporate skulduggery Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It’s impossible not to fall in love with Matthew Tannenbaum, the man at the centre of this delightful film. Reading books and chatting to people about books are two of his favourite occupations, so running a bookstore is his idea of paradise. His pleasure is so infectious that the independent bookstore he’s run in Lenox, Massachusetts for over 40 years has become a hub of bonhomie.“My favourite thing to do,” says his daughter, “is to sit in one of the pink armchairs and watch his interactions with people. Everything is informed by kindness, patience, and generosity. He’s got time for everyone Read more ...