fri 29/03/2024

Film Reviews

The Origin of Evil review - Laure Calamy stars in gripping French psychodrama

Markie Robson-Scott

A young woman (Laure Calamy; Call my Agent!; Full Time; Her Way) is trying to pluck up the courage to call her father, who she’s tracked down and has never met. Her voice trembles, she can barely speak, she has to hang up. But finally she manages it. This is Stéphane, she murmurs. May I speak to Serge?

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Late Night With the Devil review - indie-horror punches above its weight

Harry Thorfinn-

In Late Night With the Devil, light entertainment rubs shoulders with demonic forces on a talk show. It isn't quite the homerun its 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating would suggest, but this Australian indie production punches above its weight with an effective found-footage concept and lived-in 1970s setting. Regrettably, excitement for the movie's long-awaited cinema release has been dampened by controversy over its makers' use of AI-generated images.

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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire review - a modest, well-meant return

Nick Hasted

Who you going to call? Five films into the Ghostbusters franchise, every persuadable survivor from the ’84 original, plus the ad hoc, Paul Rudd-led Spengler clan introduced in the series-reviving Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). The low-key, humane, borderline dull result bears little tonal relation to that bombastic founding film.

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Immaculate review - grisly convent horror is timely but flawed

Harry Thorfinn-

Immaculate marks Sydney Sweeney’s complete takeover of the big screen. This year alone she has brought back the rom-com with Anyone But You, showed off her acting chops in whistle-blower drama Reality, and joined the Marvel universe with Madame Web. Immaculate is her headfirst dive into horror, and it’s a grisly convent story that aims for Rosemary’s Baby meets Suspiria, but sometimes feels like The Nun 2.

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Baltimore review - the story of Rose Dugdale and the IRA art heist

Markie Robson-Scott

“Poor fox,” says Rose Dugdale. She is standing beside her very rich mama and papa in the grounds of their stately home, her face blooded after the killing of her first fox. She knows this vicious upper-class ritual is wrong. It’s 1951 and she is 10. Hardcore challenges to the British establishment lie ahead.

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Robot Dreams review - short circuits of love

James Saynor

As everyone knows, the two most likeable creatures in the fictional world are the dog and the robot. Who doesn’t love a waggly tail or an aluminium cranium? So putting the two together in an animated movie looks like a Bennifer-perfect match.

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The Delinquents review - escape to the country, Buenos Aires style

Adam Sweeting

This latest outing from Argentine director Rodrigo Moreno is a wry parable about escaping the urban rat-race and searching for the meaning of life, viewed through the prism of a pair of world-weary Buenos Aires bank workers. Morán (Daniel Elias) hits upon a scheme of robbing the bank, then giving himself up for what he calculates will be a three-and-a-half year jail term.

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The New Boy review - a mystical take on Australia's treatment of its First Peoples

Adam Sweeting

This is writer-director Warwick Thornton’s third feature film, his first since 2017's excellent Sweet Country, and it took him 18 years to bring it to the screen. He describes it as “a really special one” with “a lot to say”, though viewers may find themselves having to ponder long and hard to figure out The New Boy’s layers of meaning.

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Monster review - superbly elliptical tale of a troubled boy

Saskia Baron

Monster is one of those films that you really shouldn’t read too much about before you see it, and if you are anything like me, you’ll want to watch it all over again when it ends. It’s an intricately told psychological drama that grips from the start; a fire breaks out in a high rise building in an unnamed Japanese town. Neighbours watch from their balconies and gossip about the hostess bar in the building.

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Drive-Away Dolls review - larky lesbian road movie with some iffy gear changes

Helen Hawkins

There’s a Coen brother directing, plus a cast that includes Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Oscar nominee Colman Domingo and Margaret Qualley, the standout hitchhiker in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… so why does Drive-Away Dolls feel so insubstantial?

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Janey review - fitting punchline for a contentious comedian

Helen Hawkins

The Glaswegian comedian Janey Godley, the woman who put the punch in punchline, has what she would call a “mooth” on her. It delivers pith and grit and lots of short words needing asterisks. Though possibly not for much longer, as she is in the throes of ovarian cancer.

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The Last Year of Darkness review - a loving portrait of a Chengdu gay bar

Sarah Kent

Yihao is a disaffected 20 year old living in Chengdu, capital of Sichaun Province. A thriving centre for business and commerce, Chengdu looks like any other modern city. You could mistake it for downtown Chicago except that, apart from the Walmart logo, the signage is in Chinese.

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Oscars 2024: politics aplenty but few surprises as 'Oppenheimer' dominates

Matt Wolf

Oppenheimer as expected dominated the 96th Academy Awards, winning seven trophies whilst runner-up Poor Things took four prizes, including Emma Stone in the hotly contested category of best actress.

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High & Low: John Galliano review - Kevin Macdonald charts the fashion designer's rise and fall

Markie Robson-Scott

“Fashion has a very short memory. Maybe that’s part of its charm,” says Robin Givhan of The Washington Post in Kevin Macdonald’s documentary. Whether anyone can forget John Galliano’s drunken anti-Semitic and racist outpourings at La Perle, his local café in the Marais in Paris in 2011, followed by his sacking by Dior, where he’d reigned as creative director for 14 years, is doubtful.

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Origin review - bursts of brilliance in an unwieldy frame

Helen Hawkins

Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, about the key role caste systems play in subjugating whole racial groups, was a runaway success in the US in 2020. Here, the Pultizer-Prize winning black journalist is not so well known. Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of her book aims to change that.

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Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World review - bonkers in Bucharest

James Saynor

Filmmakers of note make long movies for different reasons. Sometimes they may want the viewer to be so immersed in the movie they become “kidnapped” by it, to borrow an idea from Susan Sontag. (Epics by auteurs like Greece’s Theo Angelopoulis or Turkey’s Nuri Bilge Ceylan may be in this bracket.)

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