film reviews
Nuremberg review - history's worst criminals go on trial
Justine Elias

It's hard to criticise a movie that opens with a shot of an Allied G.I. spitting and urinating on a Nazi insignia, but that moment of smug satisfaction (Nazi punks must die!) is fleeting. Nuremberg, written and directed by James Vanderbilt, has more on its mind than self-congratulation.  

Drawing on Jack El-Hai's book "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist" and other biographies and autobiographies, Nuremberg focuses on the complex prosecution of Hitler's second in command, Herman Goering, and 21 other top Nazi officials.

Christy review - Sydney Sweeney's ring of fire
Justine Elias


Before Million Dollar Baby and Fight Girl, before women could compete in boxing at the Olympic Games, there was Christy Salters Martin. The hard-punching West Virginian known in the ring as the Coal Miner's Daughter and to U.S. television audiences as a sassy sports phenomenon was a housewife who just happened to knock people out. 

Anemone review - searching for Daniel Day-Lewis
James Saynor

Given that the film industry is a fairly vain business, it follows that every movie is to some extent a vanity project. So it seems churlish to describe this new Daniel Day-Lewis picture, which he co-wrote with his son, Ronan, for Ronan to direct and himself to star in, as other than a welcome return for the superman actor.

Train Dreams review - one man's odyssey into the American Century
Helen Hawkins

What defines a life? Money and success? Happiness? Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams employs a narrator, much as Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven did, who fields big questions like those while drawing the audience in. Bentley’s voice is an omniscient one, its owner unseen. 

Relay review - the method man
Nick Hasted

Ash (Riz Ahmed) is one of cinema’s capable men, the kind of monastically devoted pro made to be a hitman or getaway driver. David Fincher’s The Killer parodied the type with Michael Fassbender’s system-driven assassin, and from The Day of the Jackal to Drive, such men live or die by their method.

Palestine 36 review - memories of a nation
Nick Hasted

“Rebellion begins with a breath,” an opening aphorism declares in this first film recounting Palestine’s 1936-39 Arab Revolt, long historically supplanted by Israel’s seismic 1948 founding.

Die My Love review - good lovin' gone bad
Adam Sweeting

Directed by Lynne Ramsay and based on the book by Ariana Harwicz, Die My Love is an unsettling dive into the disturbed psyche of Grace, played with mercurial brilliance by Jennifer Lawrence. Grace is a new mother still struggling to get accustomed to the demands of her baby, and with her husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson), she has moved into the house that belonged to Jackson’s dead uncle, out in the remote backwoods of Montana.

Bugonia review - Yorgos Lanthimos on aliens, bees and conspiracy theories
Markie Robson-Scott

“How can you tell she’s an alien?” asks Don (Aidan Delbis, an impressive neuro-divergent actor) of his cousin Teddy (the excellent Jesse Plemons).

The Mastermind review - another slim but nourishing slice of Americana from Kelly Reichardt
Helen Hawkins

The clatter of cool jazz on the soundtrack announces writer-director Kelly Reichardt’s latest project, the kind of score that back in the day would have announced a film by a maverick new talent. The film, her ninth, has been given a faded and vintage look, tricked out in shades of greige and tan that you see in ageing photos of the 1970s, as if it too was shot then.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere review - the story of the Boss who isn't boss of his own head
James Saynor

There’s something about hauntingly performed songs written in the first person that can draw us in like nothing else. As songs from Robert Johnson to Leonard Cohen remind us, they can take us into the mental recesses of their subjects – for instance, malcontents and killers – better even than a novel or a movie. We’re kidnapped by the voice.