fri 29/03/2024

Film Reviews

The Blue Caftan review - unstitching repression in Morocco

Hugh Barnes

The eponymous garment in The Blue Caftan is a thing of beauty meticulously stitched and embroidered by Halim (Saleh Bakri), a maalem or master tailor, in one of Morocco’s oldest medinas. His craftmanship, with its focus on intricate details and on colour, is reflected in writer-director Maryam Touzani’s filmmaking, which is equally time-weighted and precise.

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Return to Seoul review - lost in translation

Nick Hasted

Freddie (Park Ji-min) is a social hand grenade, flinging herself into situations to see where the splinters fall. Born in Korea but adopted and raised by French parents, a seemingly impulsive, brief detour to Seoul sees her seek out her birth-parents.

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The Dam review - a remarkably haunting allegory

Sarah Kent

Maher (Maher el Khair, an actual brick-maker) works in a brickyard sloshing sticky mud into rectangular moulds with his bare hands. Next the mud bricks are tipped out to dry in the sun, before being fired in a large, wood fired kiln. The same process has been used for centuries, yet this brickyard is within spitting distance of the Merowe Dam, a state-of-the-art hydroelectric dam built across the Nile in Sudan. Ancient and modern technologies collide.

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Harka review - when hope is a desert

Hugh Barnes

The incendiary topic of Egyptian-American director Lotfy Nathan’s debut feature Harka is poverty and corruption in Tunisia a decade after the failed promise of the Arab Spring.

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Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 review - raw and repetitive supergroup swansong

Nick Hasted

James Gunn is running the whole DC show now, but his Guardians films have stayed free from Cinematic Universe snares, even the group’s Avengers cameos beaming in from their own pop-art corner. This swansong is their indulgent, sometimes meandering double-album and darkest chapter, making a visceral anti-vivisection and anti-eugenics case.

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The Laureate review - a romp with Robert Graves

Hugh Barnes

Nowadays Robert Graves is best known for his later and least interesting works on Greek myths and Roman emperors, but at his best, in the first decade of his writing life, as a war poet (Fairies and Fusiliers) and war memoirist (Good-Bye to All That), he was a powerful mythmaker in his own right.

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Love According to Dalva review - Belgian first time director tackles incest

Saskia Baron

What is it that drives Belgian filmmakers to make sad and disturbing films about children? Is it the influence of the Dardennes Brothers, who over a 20-year career have made superb features exploring how brutally society treats its most vulnerable (Tori and Lokita, The Kid with a BikeThe Child among others)?

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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry review - affecting tale of a late-life road trip

Helen Hawkins

Here's another small gem of a film graced with a fine central performance by Jim Broadbent, after his lovely turn in The Duke. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is, like the earlier film, the story of an eccentric older man who embarks on a risky enterprise, though it’s less comic and twice as affecting.

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Berg review - a glorious visual meditation on the mountains of Slovenia

Sarah Kent

It’s been a long time since I went walking in the mountains – too long. And Joke Olthaar’s film Berg (mountain) has intensified my longing for that very special experience.

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Rodéo review - heroine from the banlieues powers a rebel-teens saga

Helen Hawkins

Reading an interview with the French director of Rodéo, Lola Quivoron, you come to realise her compelling film about dirt-bike-rider culture relied on a sage piece of casting. Despairing of ever finding a lead for her film project, Quivoron chanced upon Julie Ledru on Instagram and the first-time actor became a key creator of the narrative. 

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Little Richard: I am Everything review - a riveting account of 'the brightest star in the universe'

Sarah Kent

Lisa Cortés’s fast-paced documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything opens with a TV interview made in 1971, 16 years after the rock 'n' roll pioneer became an overnight success with groundbreaking hits like "Tutti Frutti" and "Good Golly Miss Molly".

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Pacifiction review - portending hell in paradise

Graham Fuller

Paranoia seeps into paradise in Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, a scathing critique of French colonialism on the Polynesian island of Tahiti. Acting on rumours that his overlords are about to resume nuclear testing in the region and fearing his elimination, the urbane High Commissioner De Roller (Benoît Magimel) is forced to turn detective to learn their veracity. It’s not his fault that Inspector Clouseau might do a better job.

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Sick of Myself review - queasy black comedy about self-obsessed youth

Saskia Baron

Sick of Myself is being marketed as one of those oh so clever satirical comedies about privileged but fucked-up people. Think Worst Person in the World, Triangle of Sadness and The White Lotus and you’ll get the genre.

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Pamfir review - a retired Ukrainian smuggler is forced to do one last job

Hugh Barnes

It's fair to say that Pamfir, Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk's first feature, has been slightly overtaken by events.

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A Thousand and One review - fighting the system in 1990s New York

Saskia Baron

AV Rockwell well deserved the Grand Jury award at Sundance in January for her debut feature film, A Thousand and One.

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How To Blow Up a Pipeline review - can eco-terrorism be justified?

Adam Sweeting

“This was an act of self defence,” is the last message we hear as How To Blow Up a Pipeline approaches the end of its 104-minute span.

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