Film Reviews
Possum review - mind-infecting homage to 1970s horrorThursday, 25 October 2018
Matthew Holness clearly knows a thing or two about low-budget British horror from the early 1970s. In TV comedy Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace he was as merciless as he was affectionate in ripping the genre apart. His debut feature as writer-director is an odd, woozy... Read more... |
The Hate U Give review - American teen drama takes on Black Lives MatterWednesday, 24 October 2018
Starr Carter is 16 years old and her life straddles two very different worlds, the posh prep school she goes to with its privileged white students and the troubled black neighbourhood she lives in with her family. Read more... |
Donkeyote review - a quiet revelationTuesday, 23 October 2018
It’s an undeniably quirky set-up: an elderly Spanish farmer who takes it upon himself to travel to America and walk – alone – the epic, 2,200-mile Trail of Tears, following the westward route taken by the Cherokee fleeing white settlers. Alone, that is, apart from his trusty sheepdog Zafrana and Andalusian donkey Gorrión. It’s such a bizarre idea, in fact, that a travel agent whose help... Read more... |
LFF 2018: Roma review – Alfonso Cuarón’s triumphant return to MexicoSaturday, 20 October 2018
It’s not for nothing that Alfonso Cuarón’s mercurial CV includes Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, because this director really knows something about alchemy. Read more... |
LFF 2018: The Favourite review - Queen Anne's bizarre love triangleSaturday, 20 October 2018
Olivia Colman will in due course be appearing as Elizabeth II in The Crown, surely a role of a very different hue to her portrayal of Queen Anne in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite (shown at LFF).... Read more... |
Dogman review - Matteo Garrone takes on the mafia againFriday, 19 October 2018
There aren’t many movies that cater to audiences with a passion for canine grooming, the mafia and dismal seaside resorts but Dogman more than satisfies all those cravings. Ten years after Matteo Garrone won Cannes with the searingly brutal Gomorrah, the director returns with another drawn-from-life tale of everyday Italian mobsters. The titular hero is Marcello (Marcello Fonte), a... Read more... |
LFF 2018: In Fabric review – Peter Strickland’s horror comedy is dressed to killFriday, 19 October 2018
While much has been said of Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s cult horror Suspiria, it’s the latest stylishly bizarre confection by British writer-director Peter Strickland – about a demonic dress, no less – that comes much closer to the strange spirit of Italian horror. Read more... |
Science Fair review - big on ambition, light on rigourFriday, 19 October 2018
More than 1,700 teenage finalists representing 78 countries take part in the annual International Science and Engineering Fair, virtually the Oscars for exceptional young biologists, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, computer scientists, doctors and more. If they’re selected for ISEF, these young brainboxes get to show the fair’s forbidding judges what contributions they’re planning to make to our futures –... Read more... |
LFF 2018: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs review - Wild West tales, and Redford and JackmanWednesday, 17 October 2018
The “portmanteau” form of film-making is almost guaranteed to deliver patchy results, and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen brothers’ six-pack of tall tales from the Old West (screened at London Film Festival), can’t quite avoid this age-old trap. Read more... |
1945 review - Hungarian holocaust dramaFriday, 12 October 2018
Ferenc Török is firmly aiming at the festival and art house circuit with his slow-paced recreation of one summer day in rural Hungary. Read more... |
LFF 2018: Colette review - zinging with zeitgeisty relevanceFriday, 12 October 2018
The story of French author and transgressor of social mores Colette has been told before on screen and in song, but this new film version (shown at London Film Festival) from director Wash Westmoreland not only zings with zeitgeisty relevance, but gives each of its stars, Keira Knightley and Dominic West, one of the... Read more... |
First Man - Neil Armstrong's giant leapThursday, 11 October 2018
Echoes of Phil Kaufman’s 1983 classic The Right Stuff resonate through Damien Chazelle’s new account of how Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. Read more... |
Tehran Taboo review - transgressive animationSaturday, 06 October 2018
For all the bleakness of its subject matter, there’s considerable exhilaration to Ali Soozandeh’s animation feature Tehran Taboo. That’s due, in part, to the film’s breaking of many of the official “rules” of Iranian... Read more... |
A Star is Born review - Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga make a compellingly combustible duoFriday, 05 October 2018
"It's the same old story, told over and over forever": So remarks the redoubtable Sam Elliott late in the most recent reboot of A Star is Born, which itself manages to take an oft-told story and reinvent it very much afresh. Read more... |
Kusama - Infinity review - amazing tale of survival against the oddsThursday, 04 October 2018
Wearing a red dress covered in black polka dots and a bright red wig, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama sits drawing, a look of intense concentration on her face. It takes her three days, she says, to finish one of these huge repeating patterns (main picture) and ideas pour out faster than she can realise them, even though she works all day, six days a week. Read more... |
The Wife review - Glenn Close deserves better from her latest Oscar bidFriday, 28 September 2018
Writers need to write, or so goes the unimpeachable argument that underpins The Wife, which is being strongly touted as the film that may finally bring leading lady Glenn Close an Oscar in her seventh time at bat. Read more... |
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