Film Reviews
Iron Ladies review - working-class heroines of the Miners' StrikeTuesday, 14 October 2025
The enduring image of the 1984-1985 Miners' Strike is that of men standing arm in arm against police and of mass protests devolving into mayhem – with protesters being beaten and knocked to the ground. Read more... |
The Woman in Cabin 10 review - Scandi noir meets Agatha Christie on a superyachtMonday, 13 October 2025
A fizzy mystery cocktail with a twist and a splash, The Woman in Cabin 10, based on Ruth Ware’s bestseller, sails along like the sleek superyacht that provides its deadly setting. Read more... |
London Film Festival 2025 - crime, punishment, pop stars and shrinksFriday, 10 October 2025
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery Read more... |
I Swear review - taking stock of Tourette'sFriday, 10 October 2025
People sometimes go to the movies for the violence and maybe even for the sex. Until recently they didn’t particularly buy a ticket for the bad language, but lately, British cinema has been making this a selling point. |
A House of Dynamite review - the final countdownTuesday, 07 October 2025
Armageddon is here again, as Kathryn Bigelow’s first film in eight years examines the minutes before a nuclear missile hits Chicago from multiple perspectives, finding no hope anywhere. Read more... |
Urchin review - superb homeless dramaFriday, 03 October 2025
Urchin feels like a genuine moment in British cinema. Thematically, it offers a highly original, thoughtful, affecting account of the endless cycle of misfortune and institutional ineptness that can trap someone in homelessness. At the same time, it marks the coming of age in the careers of two brilliant young talents. Read more... |
Mr Blake at Your Service review - John Malkovich in unlikely role as an English butlerThursday, 02 October 2025
This genial oddity – its pithier French title is Complètement Cramé, meaning something along the lines of completely burnt out – stars John Malkovich and Fanny Ardant and is directed by best-selling author Gilles Legardinier, who adapted it from his own novel. Its goofiness works, some of the time, partly because of Malkovich’s French, which is fluent yet delivered in a halting drawl with an English/American accent so bad it’s almost good. Read more... |
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight review - vivid adaptation of a memoir about a Rhodesian childhoodThursday, 02 October 2025
Fans of Alexandra Fuller’s fine memoir of her childhood in Africa may be wary of this film adaptation by the actress Embeth Davidtz, her directing debut. But they should not be. This is an equally fine, sensitive rendering of Fuller’s story, with a miraculous performance by seven-year-old Lexi Venter at its heart. Read more... |
One Battle After Another review - Paul Thomas Anderson satirises America's culture warsTuesday, 30 September 2025
Paul Thomas Anderson’s frantic One Battle After Another is a storm warning for a fascist America and both a lament and a rallying call for revolutionary fervour. Read more... |
Steve review - educator in crisisMonday, 22 September 2025
What's going wrong with teenage boys and young men? Like the lauded Netflix series Adolescence, Steve – the second film collaboration between star-producer Cillian Murphy and director Tim Mielants – takes a bold and intriguing approach in its search for answers. Read more... |
Can I get a Witness? review - time to die before you get oldFriday, 19 September 2025
Some time in the not too distant future, there are only two films on offer: Duck Soup, and, if you order the DVD in advance, Zoolander. And you have to watch them in a museum. Read more... |
Happyend review - the kids are never alrightFriday, 19 September 2025
Perhaps only in Japan might it be thought the height of delinquency for a bunch of schoolkids is to spend the night sneaking back to school, climbing in and hanging out in a music room. Happyend, a Japanese teen-rebellion story, shows its central posse of disaffected sixth-formers carrying out just such a wild and crazy stunt near the start. |
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review - comedy rock band fails to revive past gloriesMonday, 15 September 2025
That difficult second documentary – or if you will, “rockumentary” – seems to have been especially challenging for Spinal Tap, since it arrives no less than 41 years after its predecessor, This Is Spinal Tap. The latter has become renowned as a definitive artefact in rock’n’roll history, a smartly deadpan portrayal of a deeply cretinous British heavy metal band in the throes of a shambolic American tour.... Read more... |
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review - an attemptedly elegiac final chapter haunted by its pastSaturday, 13 September 2025
It can be a hostage to fortune to title anything “grand”, and so it proves with the last gasp of Julian Fellowes’s everyday story of posh folk at the turn of the 20th century. The Granthams are facing a lowering of their status, and it’s time to move on out. Read more... |
Islands review - sunshine noir serves an aceFriday, 12 September 2025
From its ambiguous opening shot onwards, writer/director Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands is a tricksy animal, which doesn’t just keep you guessing about its characters and plot, but about what kind of film it is we’re watching. Read more... |
Honey Don’t! review - film noir in the bright sunTuesday, 09 September 2025
The Coen brothers’ output has been so broad-ranging, and the duo so self-deprecating, that critics have long had difficulty getting their arms around them. Telling stories of distemper in the American heartland, with the occasional drive-by hit on Old Hollywood, they defined indie cinema for a generation and then perhaps single-handedly released it from its ghetto and merged it into the mainstream. Read more... |
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