tue 22/07/2025

Film Reviews

DVD/Blu-ray: Moffie

India Lewis

Characterised by jarring juxtapositions of intense, appalling violence and the serene beauty of South AfricaOliver Hermanus’ fourth feature is the story of a young man coming to terms with his sexuality against the background of apartheid and prejudice.

Read more...

Love Sarah review - missing key ingredients

Matt Wolf

The cakes look great, but it's back to the recipe books in almost every other way for Love Sarah, a subpar film from director Eliza Schroeder about the struggles of a west London patisserie in the age of Brexit.

Read more...

Scoob! review - mostly bark, little bite

Owen Richards

Scooby fans have waited over 50 years for a proper big screen adaptation of everyone’s favourite cowardly dog (sorry Cartoon Network’s Courage).

Read more...

Finding The Way Back review - alcoholism on the rebound

Joseph Walsh

Gavin O’Connor has made a career out of sturdy films that make grown men cry. His best was Warrior - a hulking, tear-jerking tale of male fragility and addiction. His latest Finding The Way Back is a potent, raw drama that explores similar terrain and reunites him with Ben Affleck (they last worked together on The Accountant).

Read more...

Litigante review - an unflashy film which rings true

Adam Sweeting

Colombian director Franco Lolli’s debut feature Gente de Bien (2014) was a hit at several international film festivals, and Litigante should burnish his reputation further.

Read more...

The Old Guard review - serious silliness

Jill Chuah Masters

It’s hard to take The Old Guard seriously — it’s an action film about thousand-year-old immortal warriors. Pulpy flashbacks and fake blood abounds. But The Old Guard doesn’t need to be serious or even memorable: it’s a fun, feel-good film, a rare commodity these days.

Read more...

Homemade review - laughs, loss and madness in lockdown

Demetrios Matheou

If COVID-19 isn’t the only topic being tackled by creative folk at the moment, it certainly feels like it. That’s perfectly understandable, when the practical and emotional conditions of doing anything at the moment – in lockdown – invariably become, in some way, the subject.

Read more...

Back Roads review - nice cheekbones, not much else

Matt Wolf

Back Roads has languished largely unseen since its completion in 2017, and one can see why: lurid to the point of absurdity, this adaptation of a 1999 novel by co-screenwriter Tawni O’Dell is preposterously self-serious and doesn’t augur well for a hyphenate career for leading man Alex Pettyfer, the English actor (of Magic Mike fame) here doubling for the first time as director.

Read more...

Family Romance, LLC review - the chameleon blues

Nick Hasted

Werner Herzog’s appearance in The Mandalorian paid for this deadpan, documentary-like slice of extreme Japanese life, suggesting how the director’s amusingly doomy Teutonic persona...

Read more...

Lynn + Lucy review - a bruising tale of female friendship

Joseph Walsh

British director Fyzal Boulifa makes his feature film debut with a bruising account of female-friendship torn apart by personal tragedies and gossipmongers, on a council estate in Harlow. 

Read more...

A White, White Day review - white heat

Nick Hasted

This Icelandic film begins in the titular land of steam, as rain and mist envelop an erratic car which soon tumbles to its doom.

Read more...

On the Record review - #MeToo turns its lens to the music industry, gives the mic to women of colour

Jill Chuah Masters

On the Record, the latest documentary from Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering (acclaimed directors of The Hunting Ground), dives into the sexual misconduct allegations against music mogul Russell Simmons,

Read more...

The Dead and the Others review – dreamlike journey set in indigenous Brazilian community

Tom Baily

The Dead and the Others won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes in 2018, perhaps due to the supreme devotion to subject and place that this macabre work exhibits. It is a film of startling visual power and mood, with a drifting storyline that becomes bizarrely captivating.

Read more...

Fanny Lye Deliver’d review - blistering English civil war western

Joseph Walsh

Ten years in the making, Thomas Clays third feature, starring Charles Dance and Maxine Peake, is a remarkable and potent example of genre-splicing British independent filmmaking. 

Read more...

The Booksellers review – a deep dive into the eccentric world of bookselling

Joseph Walsh

Picture an antiquarian book dealer. Typically, its all Harris Tweed, horn-rimmed specs, and a slight disdain for actual customers. At the beginning of D.W.

Read more...

Joan of Arc review – tough little number

Graham Fuller

Jeanne d’Arc was 19, she believed, when she was tried for heresy by her English enemies in Rouen in 1431. Of the actors who have played her onscreen – Falconetti, Ingrid Bergman, Jean Seberg, Leelee Sobieski, Milla Jovovich among them – none has evinced more wolf-cub-like fierceness or childlike purity of purpose than does Lise Leplat Prudhomme.

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
BBC Proms: McCarthy, Bournemouth SO, Wigglesworth review - s...

It started like Sunday afternoon band concert on a seaside promenade, a massive ensemble playing it light. But while there were several too many...

theartsdesk Q&A: writer and actor Mark Gatiss on 'B...

Having played Sherlock Holmes’s politically involved older brother Mycroft in the BBC’s hit crime series Sherlock...

Ballard, Prime Video review - there's something rotten...

Following the success of its screen version of Michael Connelly’s veteran detective Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver,...

Don't Rock the Boat, The Mill at Sonning review - all a...

Now 45 years in the past, its dazzling star gone a decade or so, The Long Good Friday is a monument of British cinema....

Blu-ray: The Rebel / The Punch and Judy Man

Comedian Tony Hancock’s vertiginous rise and fall is neatly traced in the two films he completed in the early 1960s. The warning signs were...

Bookish, U&Alibi review - sleuthing and skulduggery in a...

As a sometime writer of Poirot, Sherlock and Christmas ghost stories,...

Album: Spafford Campbell - Tomorrow Held

Guitarist Louis Campbell and fiddle player Owen Spafford started playing together as teenagers in the National Youth Folk Ensemble when Sam...

The Estate, National Theatre review - hugely entertaining, b...

The first rule for brown people, says the main character – played by BAFTA-winner Adeel Akhtar – in this highly entertaining dramedy, is not to...

Music Reissues Weekly: Mike Taylor - Pendulum, Trio

Wheels of Fire was Cream’s third album. Issued in the US in June 1968 and in the UK two months later, it was a double LP. One record was...