More than a regular Nicolas Cage gurning session, thankfully, Irish director Finnegan’s film is a lurid and feverish phycological thriller that looks to 70s Australian and U.S. cinema for inspiration. Cage is The Surfer, a middle-aged man returning to…
Ostensibly a documentary about locating the real person behind the image of Mavis Beacon, the African American woman who fronted the widely used educational typing software program, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, director Jazmin Jones’s freewheeling film sp…
Not quite the knockabout lark mooted by the trailers, the latest Marvel outing admirably strives for something deeper but is undone by structural issues. When we catch up with assassin Yelena Belova (Pugh) she is still mourning the death of her adopti…
Part wry epistolary character sketch, and part song and dance performance piece, Forsyth and Pollard’s film ingeniously and catchily profiles the titular woman via songs by Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini, as well as readings of letters Flowe…
A big hit in its native France, this slightly rote inspirational feelgood film is elevated by a pair of endearing central performances. Thibault (Lavernhe) is a globe-trotting feted orchestra conductor based in Lille. Thibault’s seemingly charmed life is …
Shades of ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ in this deliriously erotic but flawed Brazilian noir-tinged thriller. It opens with handsome twenty-one-year-old Heraldo (Xavier) frolicking about on the beach with his older brother Jorge (Capivara). Heraldo is …
This documentary about the second-generation Detroit techno artist, producer and label owner is disappointingly, and ironically given his dancefloor-oriented work, inert. Craig was born in a rundown Detroit, to supportive middle-class parents (interviewed…
Mining a wealth of material that became available from the estate of the controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, following her death at the age of 102 in 2003, Veiel’s film is an attempt to discover whether the artist was an active Nazi collaborator or …
Sympathy for inheritance taxpayers in this handsomely rendered documentary profile of a trio of siblings as they prepare to sell their late mother’s grand but shabby pile, Cumnor Place in Oxfordshire. The house was acquired, it is revealed, after the disc…
The Sunderland Shorts Film Festival returns in May for a 10th anniversary special, and the depth, breadth and quality of work on show this year remains as astonishing as ever. This week long celebration of short films is one of the real gems of the nor…
Ryan Coogler’s bizarre, overstuffed picture, a horror flick and commentary on race in America, which structurally and thematically looks to ‘From Dusk to Dawn’ may have worked as a persuasively blunt ninety-minute B-movie, but at two-and-a-quarter hours, …
Alex Garland’s vivid and harrowing war picture is based upon the experiences of communications officer Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza and focuses on one specific incident during the Iraq war in 2006. Mendoza also co-directed the film, and the script is taken from …
In a climate of overlong films, sequels, and IP abuse, horror aces Blumhouse can normally be relied upon to turn in standalone, brisk genre pieces. Their latest film to, ahem, drop, a high-concept thriller with horror elements is no exception. Meghann…
Writer-director Louise Courvoisier’s feature debut is an appealing coming-of-age tale set in rural France. Totone (Faveau) is an eighteen-year-old who spends his days hanging out with this friends Jean Yves (Bernard) and Francis (Baudry), drinking and occ…
Belgian director-co-writer Van Dijl’s film is a slow burning and nuanced but gripping drama thriller. Remarkable newcomer Tessa Van den Broeck is Julie, a sixteen-year-old intensely focused tennis ace from a working class background, who, thanks to a scho…
Revolving around the 1972 John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band’s ‘One to One’ concert at Madison Square Garden, this fascinating and keenly paced documentary charts John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s arrival in New York City at a turbulent time in US history, and…
This loose Irish remake of Gianni Di Gregorio’s 2008 Italian picture ‘Mid-August Lunch’ loses some of the gentle melancholy of the original but features some amusing and affecting moments. Edward (McArdle) is a queer up-and-coming novelist who lives with …
Drawing on archive clips of Irish novelist Edna O’Brien, illuminating interviews with contemporaries and friends, and readings from her letters by actor Jessie Buckley, this documentary is an impressively rounded portrait of a charismatic and complex figu…
Finnish London based filmmaker Mikko Mäkelä’s film is an undercooked charter study elevated by an impressive central performance from Ruaridh Mollica. He is Max, a young Scottish journalist and aspiring novelist, working in London. Max is impatient for hi…
Shades of Chabrol but with a more absurdist streak in the latest from French genre tweaker Guiraudie, writer-director of singular thriller, ‘Stranger by the Lake’. It begins with Jérémie (Kysyl) a soft-spoken, good-looking thirtysomething arriving in Sain…
British Indian writer-director Suri’s picture works both as a slow-burning thriller and as a blistering expose of corruption, misogyny, and prejudice. Goswami is the titular character, a recently widowed middle class Indian woman whose police officer husb…
Gia Coppola’s film feels like an obvious attempt to do for star Pamela Anderson what ‘The Wrestler’ did for Mickey Rourke. It feels heartfelt enough but underwhelms on the script front. Anderson is Shelly Gardner, a fifty-seven-year-old dancer who has per…
Ozon’s latest, a far more restrained and nuanced offering than the enjoyably broad ‘The Crime is Mine’, begins as a fairly standard middlebrow drama before switching to something far more slippery and compelling midway. Michelle (Vincent) is enjoying her …
Portuguese Scotland-based filmmaker Carreira makes an impressive directorial debut with this unsettling exploration of modern work culture. Aurora (Santos, excellent) is a young Portuguese woman working at a vast online delivery warehouse or wryl…
The influence of Wes Anderson hangs heavy over this misfiring Indian comedy horror, which is almost redeemed by a great turn from Radhika Apte. Following her arranged marriage to heavy-drinking schlub, Pathak (Gopal), Uma (Apte) moves into her husband’s s…
Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis’ gorgeously rendered, dialogue-free animation is part riveting adventure a la Disney’s ‘The Incredible Journey’ and part ecological fable. It opens with black cat, Cat, stealing a fish from a pack of dogs who give chase. …
This artful but frank documentary depicts the loving but turbulent relationship between successful American photographer Joel Meyerowitz and his British partner Maggie Barrett. Maggie is an author but has only produced one self-published book. Joel is a t…
Documentarian Shulman’s cine-portrait of British photographer Martin Parr is as bracing and enjoyable as a 99 in a coastal sea breeze. The picture charts the career of the photographer from his early black and white, more reportage style, pictures of work…
The sequels to 2001’s frothy and fun ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’, adapted from Helen Fielding’s columns/novel, failed to capture the sparkle of the original. The follow up, 2004’s ‘Bridget Jones: The End of Reason’ shuffled the characters around aimlessly wit…
The latest from Dreamworks, adapted from Dav Pilkey’s popular series of graphic novels is an unexpected, if occasionally over frantic, treat. The titular hero’s origin is outlined in the opening sequence as the famed but dim policeman, Officer Knight, rep…
Reuniting with Mike Leigh nearly three decades after her star-making turn in ‘Secrets and Lies’ Marianne Jean-Baptiste delivers a barnstorming performance as a disappointed and bitter woman raging at the world in this complex and empathetic character stud…
Filmed in secret in Iran, shortly before the director was forced to flee, Rasoulof’s sprawling drama is a disturbing psychological depiction of life under a theocratic regime. Family man Iman (Zahre) has been appointed investigator to the Islamic Revoluti…
Films about putting bands together tend to be rambunctious affairs as they chronicle disparate misfits joining forces to make a joyous, cathartic racket. This Japanese animation is a more reflective, melancholy, but ultimately life-affirming, affair. Tots…
The influence of Wes Anderson hangs heavy over this misfiring Indian comedy horror, which is almost redeemed by a great turn from Radhika Apte. Following her arranged marriage to heavy-drinking schlub, Pathak (Gopal), Uma (Apte)…
Adapted from Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir of the same name, Walter Salles’ latest is a stirring study of resistance and forbearance. It begins in 1970 as former politician Rubens Paiva returns to Rio de Janeiro, after years of s…
Australian animator Adam Elliott has chronicled the lives of troubled outsiders in oddball and heartfelt pictures such as ‘Mary and Max’ and short ‘Harvie Krumpet’. His latest is a darkly whimsical study of a socially awkward woman who, despite her beleag…
Based on a true story, cinematographer turned director Morrison’s feature debut, a biopic of boxer Claressa Shields, scripted by Barry ‘Moonlight’ Jenkins, begins as a standard inspirational sports tale, before switching to something more…
The austere titles of ‘The Brutalist’ self-consciously announce this as a work of high seriousness and gravitas. Director Brady Corbet makes good on this promise though, with a sprawling, novelistic and allegorically rich study of the immigrant experience…
Dutch writer-director Reijn looks to 80s erotic thrillers such as Indecent Proposal and Basic Instinct for inspiration for this bold drama. Kidman is Romy Mathis, the high-powered CEO of a teasingly unspecified ‘robot business’ Tensile. Her husband Jacob …
With his penchant for folklore, intense visuals and depictions of delirium exhibited in such films as ‘The Witch’, ‘The Northman’ and ‘The Lighthouse’, Robert Eggers would seem an ideal candidate to remake F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent impressionist masterpie…
This contrived, chronology-juggling romcom with a twist is an ill-fitting combination of tweeness and heavy drama. Middle-aged Weetabix representative (twee!) Tobias (Garfield) is on his way to buy a pen to sign his divorce papers when he is knocked over …
Based on the novel by Colson Whitehead, RaMell Ross's supremely tactile and lyrical picture feels worlds removed from the usual mannered and lifeless book adaptations. Elwood Curtis (Herisse) is an African American teen living in the Jim Crow South 60s. R…
Following his biopics ‘Jackie’ and ‘Spencer’, Chilean filmmaker Larrain rounds off his ‘Lady in Heels’ trilogy with this elegiac study of the last days of opera diva Maria Callas. Scripted by Brit Steven Knight, the picture broadly focuses on the life of …
Writer-director-star Jesse Eisenberg’s second directorial effort is an affecting, amusing and thematically rich two-hander. Eisenberg is David, a middle-aged Jewish New Yorker travelling to Poland, along with his cousin Benji (Culkin) so they can pay thei…
Writer-director Kapadia’s deeply empathetic depiction of urban and rural life in India profiles a trio of working class women in Mumbai. Prabha (Kusruti) is a hardworking nurse in a shabby hospital. She had an arranged marriage some years earlier, but her…
Despite a game performance from Amy Adams, this adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s 2021 darkly comic book, a feminist portrait of motherhood with a lycanthropic edge, feels disappointingly toothless. Adams is ‘Mother’ a painter and curator who gave up her caree…
The game’s the thing in this strikingly amusing and original documentary. During January 2021, the grimmest moment of the COVID lockdown, two jobless actors, Sam Crane, who had been due to start as the lead in ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and his m…
Zambian-Welsh writer-director Nyoni’s striking follow up to her supremely confident debut feature ‘I am Not a Witch’ is a brooding, darkly comic examination of contemporary Zambian society with surreal touches. We first encounter middle-class woman Shula …
'All Quiet on the Western Front' director Edward Berger narrows his canvas to a single setting for this enjoyably pulpy picture based on Robert Harris’s 2006 book. The Pope has died and it is up to the quietly authoritative Cardinal Lawrence (Fiennes), th…
British Sri Lankan director Chloe Abrahams’ harrowing, but clear-eyed and lyrical documentary, is both a cinematic therapy session and a feminist exhumation of family history told via three generations of women. The title was inspired by Chloe’s memories …
Shades of Buñuel in this absurdist political satire as G7 leaders assemble for a meeting in a manor house in the German countryside to draft a joint statement about the latest global crisis. Cate Blanchett’s Mutti Merkel-like Chancellor Hilda Orlmann is t…
Following the kinetic thrill of ‘Challengers’ Guadagnino shifts to something more languid with this adaptation of William Burroughs’ novella. It is Mexico in the 1940s and louche writer Lee (Craig), having evaded police during a drugs bust, spends his day…
Director Morgan Neville has already tackled a music documentary with unsung soul performers in film ‘20 Feet from Stardom’. His latest profiles the superstar producer-singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams, boldly, through the medium of LEGO animation. Given…
This unsubtle but amiable enough Britfilm charts the efforts of the trio behind IVF treatment over a ten-year period and the obstacles they encounter along the way. Northern scientist Robert Edwards (Norton) has already managed to fertilise animal eggs in…
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