Film
James Saynor
Given that the British Red Cross has slammed Britain’s little archipelago of lock-ups for immigrants, and given that the government seems to have upped its xenophobia of late, this fictional look inside an immigration detention centre lands at a helpful time.It’s based, surprisingly enough, on the personal immigration experiences of producer Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor, who here writes and directs her first feature. The length of the movie – a natty 80 minutes – reminded me at first of the BBC’s Play for Today strand of many aeons past, as did its TV-style 4-by-3 aspect ratio, its social-justice Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If you’re old enough to remember LPs and the lost art of reading sleeve notes (let alone writing them), this one’s for you. The titular session man is the fabled keyboard player Nicky Hopkins, whose teeming creativity and dancing digits left their indelible mark across an extraordinary swathe of records from the golden age of rock’n’roll.Among Hopkins’ most recognisable feats are his Jerry Lee Lewis-style romp through the Beatles’ "Revolution", contributions to several tracks on John Lennon’s Imagine including "Jealous Guy", rollicking ivory-tickling on George Harrison’s "Give Me Love", his Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Seemingly shot in a snow globe containing haunted mountains and a neo-noirish Alpine ‘burg, The Ice Tower is the most expressionistic but relatable of the French-Bosnian director Lucile Hadžihalilović’s eerie oneiric fables involving endangered motherless children.It’s also the prettiest and the queasiest, a glittering alt-Gothic showcase for Marion Cotillard as a toxic lynx-eyed movie diva. The long-damaged Cristina van der Berg, who as a girl was objectified and unhappily groomed for stardom, preys on the smitten adolescent orphan Jeanne (stealthy newcomer Clara Pacini) while acting – and Read more ...
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. Like Malick, Bentley is scrutinising a small group of people living in a bygone era in a remote part of North America; Malick focused on the Texas panhandle, Bentley on small-town Idaho at the turn of the century. Here a logger called Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) ekes out a tough, often isolated living, moving with the Read more ...
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.The plan is for Jackson to fix the place up, when he can get around to it. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, with Jackson’s parents living nearby Read more ...
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).Yurgos Lanthimos’s gripping black comedy Bugonia (nothing to do with begonias, by the way, but a Greek word concerning bees’ ability to spontaneously generate from a cow’s carcass) is marvellously deranged, taking a conspiracy theory to its logical, or illogical, conclusion. The screenplay is adapted by Will Tracy (Succession; The Menu; The Regime) from Jang Joon-hwan’s film Save the Green Planet!. And Robbie Ryan’s cinematography using large-format Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The village of Cesinova has the largest white stork population in Macedonia; every chimney and steeple is festooned with the scruffy nests of these enormous birds. We see the flock arriving in spring to reclaim their nesting spots. Perched on a huge mound of twigs and leaves, each pair settles in by tossing back their long necks and clattering their beaks in greeting.Once the eggs have been laid and the chicks hatched, the hard work begins; but the timing is perfect. The farmers are just beginning to plough their fields and we see the storks gobbling up any frogs, mice and snakes escaping the Read more ...
James Saynor
Hell has no fury like a stan scorned, as an Eminem song memorably established with respect to obsessed fanboys in the pop world, and this visually nimble not-quite-thriller shows us the further perils of celebrity disciples who get the hump.Britain’s Archie Madekwe plays Oliver, an up-and-coming music artist in LA, provider of pleasurable late-century-influenced pop and surrounded by the usual crew of Gen Z mates and loafers. In a clever opening scene, he gloms onto a nervous, shifty, college-dodging worker in a clothes store, and somehow the gulf in power and personality between them makes Read more ...
Pamela Jahn
Even more than his new film, Jafar Panahi was a sensation at Cannes this year. For the first time in 15 years, the Iranian director was able to present a work in person at the festival. Two arrests by the Iranian government, which had followed his 2010s 20-year house arrest, had made him a prisoner of the state.Nevertheless, Panahi has continued to film without official permission. He managed to shoot five films this way, including Taxi Tehran which won the Golden Bear at the 2015 Berlinale. Shortly after his release in February 2023, he proceeded to make It Was Just an Accident, which won Read more ...
Justine Elias
Fear of being alone with our own thoughts, as much as fear of missing out, prevents most of us from disconnecting from our electronic devices and braving even a few hours in total darkness. For a brave assortment of teenagers, though, the task of unplugging from social media – and reconnecting with their still-developing minds – is a year-long journey into the wilderness and back. Folktales, the new documentary from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, explores the Norwegian Folk School movement, which began in the mid-1840s as a way to bring education to rural children. Now the folk schools Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Fierce, unpredictable, complex, cussed, commie. Seymour Hersh would probably admit to all those descriptions of him except the last. Now at last the man who has dominated investigative journalism for 60 years has agreed to be investigated himself for a documentary made by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, 20 years after they first asked him.One could list the peaks of his career too – My Lai, Watergate, Abu Ghraib – recognising that these names also represent dark lows of modern American history. “Sy”, as he is known, claims that what a reporter personally believes isn’t the point, only what Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident is a shattering absurdist anti-caper – a kind of minimalist take on It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World inspired by Iran’s ongoing tragedy. His country's top director and one of the sharpest thorns in the Islamic Republic’s regime, Panahi was promoting his Palme’ d’Or-winner in New York last Monday when Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced him to a year’s imprisonment for “propagandia activities”. He’s also banned from overseas travel for two years and from joining social and political organisations. The Supreme Leader and his judges Read more ...