Film Reviews

Scrapper review - home alone, but then Dad turns up

Saskia Baron Friday, 25 August 2023

It’s the summer holidays, and though Georgie (Lola Campbell) is only 12, she’s managing to keep her council house looking just the way her mum liked it. There may be a few spiders hanging around but they have names and personalities and there’s food in the cupboard, even if it’s been paid for from the proceeds of selling the bikes Georgie has stolen.

The Red Shoes: Next Step review - teen dancer's crisis

Hugh Barnes Friday, 25 August 2023

Fans of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's timeless classic The Red Shoes shouldn’t rush to The Red Shoes: Next Step expecting a sequel. This sentimental Australian teen drama is more of a step-change than a follow-up.

The Innocent review - muddled French crime comedy

James Saynor Thursday, 24 August 2023

Thespians and thieves have often pooled their resources in movies, notably in the work of Woody Allen. Since acting is basically a form of lying, goes the joke, actors dine at the same Runyon-esque table as people who nick stuff, and this French comedy offers a new story of a crim who needs some muscle from the theatrical arts.

Blue Beetle review - radical rehash

Nick Hasted Sunday, 20 August 2023

Blue Beetle is DC’s first screen Latino superhero, a recent development in the history of a D-grade character summed up here in his own film as “like the Flash… or Superman… but not as good”. Scraping the character barrel and first meant for cable, his debut also resists the grim “adult” gravitas routinely borrowed from Alan Moore and Frank Miller’s Eighties comics, popping with bright colours and breezy, communal humanity.

Lie With Me review - a bittersweet enchantment

Hugh Barnes Friday, 18 August 2023

The English title of Olivier Peyon’s new movie is a rather hackneyed pun that not only doesn’t work in the original language but also manages to convey exactly the wrong meaning. Arrête avec tes Mensonges is a faintly Almodóvarian love story about the importance (and sometimes difficulty) of facing up to the truth about yourself. However, instead of Stop With Your Lies, we get Lie With Me.

Afire review - a moral reckoning by the Baltic

James Saynor Wednesday, 16 August 2023

Experts in irony tend to see life as faintly absurd, relatively meaningless and usually circular. They’re too self-aware to be neurotic and live life in short bursts, letting out little private snorts of dry, amused exasperation at frequent intervals.

Blu-ray: Earwig

Justine Elias Tuesday, 15 August 2023

Even more than David Lynch, to whom her work has been compared, director Lucile Hadžihalilović is a strange agent between this world and the dreamworld.

Haunted Mansion review - corporate craft

Nick Hasted Saturday, 12 August 2023

A Disney theme park ride adaptation remake is a challenging place to make your mark, and the dumping of Guillermo del Toro for promising real, supposedly child-freaking scares dampens hopes further. Replacement director Justin Simien (Dear White People) at least professes himself a fan of the titular attraction, and with screenwriter Katie Dippold (Parks and Recreation, Paul Feig’s female Ghostbusters) slips humanity into the corporate shilling.

L'immensità review - enigmatic portrait of a trans teen in an unhappy family

Helen Hawkins Thursday, 10 August 2023

Emanuele Crialese’s latest, L’immensità, is an oddity. It’s perfectly formed, yet still feels as if its final reel went missing. Its title – usually translated as “infinity” – is typical of this enigmatic quality.

You Hurt My Feelings review - Manhattanite comedy with a characterful cast

Saskia Baron Wednesday, 09 August 2023

Popped straight out to the streamers, Nicole Holofcener’s new film has apparently been labelled as insufficiently marketable for a theatrical release against the juggernaut of Barbenheimer. Surely by now a movie that doesn't feature either Ryan Gosling or Florence Pugh’s bare chests could be allowed in the cinema?

Alone at Night review - cam girl meets crowbar killer

James Saynor Monday, 07 August 2023

The vogue for star ratings fixed to film reviews arrived after the heyday of exploitation movies, which is perhaps just as well because the whole point of such films is that they’re good and terrible at the same time.

Joy Ride review - pioneering horniness

Nick Hasted Sunday, 06 August 2023

This Seth Rogen-produced, Family Guy writers-co-scripted gross-out comedy with four Chinese-American women fully lives up and down to its description. With Crazy Rich Asians co-writer Adele Lim as debuting director, it’s also another demographically pioneering work.

Meg 2: The Trench review - into the jaws of tedium

Justine Elias Saturday, 05 August 2023

Big bitey sharks and prehistoric monsters have tantalised the imaginations of summer moviegoers for decades, from Jules Verne to Jaws. James Cameron’s Avatar 2: The Way of Water and the director’s recent scientific commentary on the OceanGate submersible disaster also serve to underline the public fascination with the dangerous deep.

Paris Memories review - recalling the terror, bit by bit

James Saynor Wednesday, 02 August 2023

People have been making films about the unreliability of memory since, oh, I can’t remember. Often it’s a cue for a genre escapade, but here French filmmaker Alice Winocour gives us a social drama, telling the fictional story of a survivor of the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, which killed 130.

Baato review - Nepalese mountain folk await big changes with excitement and anxiety

Sarah Kent Sunday, 30 July 2023

It doesn’t do to be in a hurry in Nepal. In Baato, directors Kate Stryker and Lucas Millard follow Mikma and her family as they travel 300 kilometres from their mountain village in Eastern Nepal to the town of Terai. It takes the best part of a week for the five adults, two boys, and two dogs to walk the narrow paths until they reach the unpaved road where they can board rickety buses or jeeps to complete their journey.

The Beanie Bubble review - an under-stuffed, misshapen product saga

Helen Hawkins Saturday, 29 July 2023

Another week, another toy story, in the wake of Barbie. And another origin-of-hit-product story, too, after Air. The Beanie Bubble, though, has none of the surprisingly gripping appeal of Nike’s rise and rise via a single trainer design, nor the (sporadic) wit and bounce of Greta Gerwig’s mega-hit. It’s all corporate idiocy, shabby dealings, and misogyny. And failure is nowhere near as fascinating as success.