Film
DVD/Blu-ray: The HoldoversTuesday, 14 May 2024
Glance at The Holdovers’ synopsis and you might suspect that Alexander Payne’s latest effort is a slice of lightweight seasonal schmaltz. Yes, it is set at Christmas, and contains tear-jerking moments, but Payne and screenwriter David Hemingson... Read more... |
Our Mothers review - revisiting the horrors of Guatemala's civil warMonday, 13 May 2024
Director Cesar Diaz’s debut feature film was made on a modest budget and confines its running time to a crisp 78 minutes, but its impact is like being hit over the head with a sandbag. We frequently hear the word “genocide” being bandied about, but... Read more... |
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review - a post-human paradiseSaturday, 11 May 2024
Planet of the Apes is the most artfully replenished franchise, from the original series’ elegant time-travel loop to the reboot’s rich, deepening milieu. Director Wes Ball again offers serious sf, just as much as Dune, considering the consequences... Read more... |
Bermondsey Tales: Fall of the Roman Empire review - dirty deeds done dirt cheapFriday, 17 May 2024
What with the likes of Sexy Beast, Layer Cake, The Hatton Garden Job and the oeuvre of Guy Ritchie, the British gangster movie has become its own quaint little genre, a bit like an offshoot of the Ealing comedy with added thuggery, swearing and... Read more... |
Two Tickets to Greece review - the highs and lows of a holiday from hellWednesday, 15 May 2024
Two women were best friends at school but they haven’t seen each other in years. One is an uptight divorcée, the other a free spirit. They have nothing in common any more but go on holiday to Greece together. A recipe for disaster, or what?Laure... Read more... |
Hoard review - not any old rubbishWednesday, 15 May 2024
A visually dazzling, fiercely acted psychological drama with a manic comic edge, Hoard channels an 18-year-old South Londoner’s quest to lay the ghost – or reclaim the spirit – of her long dead mentally ill mother through her sexual pursuit of the... Read more... |
Blu-ray: ChocolatWednesday, 15 May 2024
Claire Denis’ 1988 debut is a sensual madeleine to her Cameroonian childhood, with its taste of termites on butter, sound of birdsong and insect chitter, and the camera’s slow turn and rise into vast vistas. It’s also a colonial reckoning, setting... Read more... |
La Chimera review - magical realism with a touch of FelliniFriday, 10 May 2024
Italian director Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders, Happy as Lazarro), ploughs a charmingly idiosyncratic furrow that might be described as magical realism, combining as it does vivid depictions of rural communities with shafts of fantasy and fable... Read more... |
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger review - the Archers up closeFriday, 10 May 2024
This long, fascinating documentary was apparently intended as the centrepiece of last autumn’s BFI celebration of the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. But Made in England was delayed while Martin Scorsese (executive producer,... Read more... |
Love Lies Bleeding review - a pumped-up neo-noirSaturday, 04 May 2024
Somewhere along a desert highway in the American Southwest, where there's not much to do besides get drunk, shoot guns, and pump iron, a stranger comes to town.In Love Lies Bleeding, a smart, sexy neo-noir, the drifter is a weightlifter named Jackie... Read more... |
Nezouh review - seeking magic in a warFriday, 03 May 2024
The 21st century learnt afresh about the reality of carpet-bombed cities thanks to the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. And the Syrian war-set movie Nezouh begins with a teenage girl huddled in a tight, enclosed space – perhaps the bunk bed of... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The DreamersTuesday, 30 April 2024
Isabelle (Eva Green) leans over, her long hair catches fire from a candle, and Matthew (Michael Pitt) devotedly snuffs it out. She doesn’t miss a beat at this real-life accident, consumed already by The Dreamers’ closed world of a Left Bank... Read more... |
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