Film Reviews
The Salt Path review - the transformative power of natureSaturday, 31 May 2025![]()
“I can’t move my arms or legs but apart from that I’m good to go.” Moth (Jason Isaacs) has to be pulled out of the tent in his sleeping bag by his wife Ray (Gillian Anderson). And this is only the second day of their 630-mile walk, split into two summers, along the south-west coastal path from Minehead to South Haven Point. Read more... |
Bogancloch review - every frame a work of artSaturday, 31 May 2025![]()
Director Ben Rivers is primarily an artist, and it shows. Every frame of Bogancloch is treated as a work of art and the viewer is given ample time to relish the beauty of the framing, lighting and composition. Many of the shots fall into traditional categories such as still life, landscape and portraiture and would work equally well as photographs. Read more... |
When the Light Breaks review - only lovers left aliveTuesday, 27 May 2025![]()
Grief takes unexpected turns over the course of a long Icelandic day in Rúnar Rúnarsson’s romantic tragedy, a Prix Un Certain Regard contender at last year’s Cannes. Read more... |
Mongrel review - deeply empathetic filmmaking from TaiwanSaturday, 24 May 2025![]()
There is a dark, spectral quality to this compassionate film about Southeast Asian migrant workers in rural Taiwan. At the centre of this story is Oom, played with quiet stoicism by Wanlop Rungkumjad, who is one of many Thai, Cambodian and Myanmar nationals who have entered Taiwan illegally to find care work in its remote mountainous regions. Read more... |
The Phoenician Scheme review - further adventures in the idiosyncratic world of Wes AndersonFriday, 23 May 2025![]()
It’s not what he says, it’s the way he says it. Few filmmakers have bent the term “auteur” to their own ends more boldly than Wes Anderson, whose arresting visual style, oblique wit and skill in picking actors who can mould themselves to the unique demands of Wes-world is surely unequalled. Read more... |
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review - can this really be the end for Ethan Hunt?Thursday, 22 May 2025![]()
Whether it is or isn’t the final Mission: Impossible film, there’s a distinct fin-de-siècle feel about this eighth instalment, and not only because of its title. An early scene brings a nostalgic recap of highlights from the series’ history (which stretches back to 1996), with a voice-over from Angela Bassett’s President Sloane (pictured below) pleading with Ethan Hunt to return to save the world one more time. Read more... |
Magic Farm review - numpties from the NinetiesSaturday, 17 May 2025![]()
There’s nothing more healthy than dissing your own dad, and filmmaker Amalia Ulman says that her old man was “a Gen X deadbeat edgelord skater” when she was growing up in the 1990s. The phrase brings the half-forgotten world of Generation X back to us from the mists of time, with its slackers and Douglas Coupland books and mumbling evasions. Read more... |
Good One review - a life lesson in the wild with her dad and his palFriday, 16 May 2025![]()
Good One is a generation-and-gender gap drama that mostly unfolds during a weekend hiking and camping trip in the Catskills Forest Preserve in upstate New York. Read more... |
E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea review - dull docu-fiction take on the designer-architectFriday, 16 May 2025![]()
It’s hard to say who is going to enjoy E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea. Admirers of the modernist designer-architect will be frustrated by how little of her other work is actually visible on screen while fans of feminist biopics might well be underwhelmed by the film’s languid pace and arty flourishes. Read more... |
The Marching Band review - what's the French for 'Brassed Off'?Thursday, 15 May 2025![]()
In Emmanuel Courcol’s drama The Marching Band (En Fanfare in French, and also released as My Brother's Band), a struggling community band in a mining town in northern French has fallen on hard times. Elements of déjà vu, perhaps? Read more... |
The Last Musician of Auschwitz review - a haunting testamentTuesday, 13 May 2025![]()
“It is so disgraceful, what happened there,” says Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, in a comment that is the understatement of the century. She is referring to the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was held prisoner. Read more... |
Riefenstahl review - fascinating fascism? Portrait of the Nazis' favourite film-makerFriday, 09 May 2025![]()
There used to be an unwritten rule among BBC commissioners about how long an interval had to pass before greenlighting a new documentary on a familiar subject – Shakespeare, Ancient Egypt, Andy Warhol – they all came round again with a decent interlude between reassessments. But if the pitch involved Nazis, all bets were off. Read more... |
The Surfer review - Nicolas Cage is relentlessly down and out in western AustraliaFriday, 09 May 2025![]()
“Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” is the menacing motto (sounds more scary with an Australian accent) of the tanned, muscular denizens of Luna Bay beach. But the unnamed hero known as The Surfer, played by Nicolas Cage, isn’t listening. Read more... |
Desire: The Carl Craig Story review - a worthy, brand-conscious encomium for a techno starFriday, 09 May 2025![]()
Carl Craig (b.1969) is a leading Detroit electronic music producer and DJ whose Planet E Communications label has existed for over three decades. This 90-minute documentary, which was directed by Jean-Cosme Delaloye and features over thirty interviews, tells Craig's life story and attempts to define his importance. It's accompanied by a soundtrack largely comprising music recorded by him, either under his own name or under his many aliases. Read more... |
Words of War review - portrait of a doomed truth-seeker in Putin's RussiaThursday, 08 May 2025![]()
The reporting of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building in 2006 – on Vladimir Putin’s birthday, a deranged gift from his loyal security services – is perhaps the nearest thing we have to a full diagnosis of the horrifying corruption and brutality of Russia under his governance. Read more... |
Two to One review - bank heist with a big catchMonday, 05 May 2025![]()
The Ealing-like comedy heist caper Two to One is Natja Brunckhorst’s second feature as a director, after the 2002 short film La Mer, but most people will remember her for an extraordinary performance as a 13-year-old actor in Uli Edel’s 1981 cult film Christiane F. The following year, she had an equally memorable walk-on in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s last film ... Read more... |
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