Film Reviews
A Man Called Otto review - Tom Hanks stars but doesn't sparkleFriday, 06 January 2023
There are going to be people who enjoy A Man Called Otto I’m sure, but it’s definitely not a film for hardened cynics or Tom Hanks' finest hour. It’s a remake of 2017’s Swedish black comedy, A Man called Ove – itself based on a popular novel. Read more... |
Corsage review - Vicky Krieps is superb as Empress Elisabeth of AustriaFriday, 30 December 2022
“At the age of 40 a person begins to disperse and fade, darkening like a cloud,” says Elisabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, played by a mesmerising Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread) in Austrian director Marie Kreutzer’s brilliant, fictionalised portrait of a woman whose main duties are to have her hair braided and stay thin, eating only orange slices for dinner. If her looks fade in this circumscribed royal world, what will be left of her? Read more... |
The Pale Blue Eye review - telltale heartsTuesday, 27 December 2022
Edgar Allan Poe fathered the detective genre as well as a school of Gothic horror, and Scott Cooper’s adaptation of Louis Bayard’s 1830-set novel acts as an origin story for the author and the whodunnit. Read more... |
Wildcat review - damaged war veteran reborn in the Peruvian jungleFriday, 23 December 2022
The bond between humans and animals sometimes passeth all understanding. Wildcat is the story of 20-something British Army veteran Harry Turner, American ecologist Samantha Zwicker, and a young ocelot called Keanu, who becomes an almost mythic talisman of Harry’s battle with post-traumatic stress and suicidal urges. Read more... |
Avatar: The Way of Water review - is that all there is?Friday, 23 December 2022
You may wonder: is this it? James Cameron’s Avatar sequel replays Earth’s colonial assault on Pandora in the original, cancelling out the blue-skinned native Na’vi’s victory under the Dances With Wolves-like, blue-white saviour command of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic Marine mentally steering a genetically engineered Na’vi avatar. Read more... |
Veronica Lee's Top 10 Films of 2022Sunday, 18 December 2022
In what feels like a less than stellar year for cinema, some films stand out. In some instances it was because I stepped a little outside my normal fare of blockbusters or star-driven vehicles and saw some films I might have thought a little too arthouse for my tastes. I'm very glad I did because otherwise I might not have seen a couple on this list. Read more... |
Charlotte review - the story of artist Charlotte Salomon, murdered in AuschwitzTuesday, 13 December 2022
“Only by doing something mad can I hope to stay sane,” says Charlotte Salomon (voiced by Keira Knightley) to her lover, Alexander Nagler (Sam Claflin). “I feel it inside me, the same demon that’s haunted so many in my family.” Read more... |
Rimini review - crooner without a conscienceSaturday, 10 December 2022
The cartoonist Gerald Scarfe – or his equally mordant forebear George Cruikshank – couldn’t have drawn a seedier Eurotrash excrescence than the crooner, Richie Bravo, who dominates Ulrich’s Seidl’s Rimini. Read more... |
Hold Me Tight review - Vicky Krieps mesmerisesFriday, 09 December 2022
Mathieu Amalric's Hold me Tight (Serre moi fort) keeps springing surprises. Perhaps the first is the title. It sounds like an invitation to settle down with the popcorn to enjoy a light French film dealing with intimacy. Read more... |
The Silent Twins review - the tragic story of the Welsh teens who were sent to BroadmoorFriday, 09 December 2022
The fascinating story of the silent twins, June and Jennifer Gibbons, who were incarcerated in Broadmoor for 12 years for minor crimes, has been told before, several times. There’s a 1986 BBC film by Jon Amiel based on Marjorie Wallace’s book about them; a documentary by Olivia Lichtenstein in 1994; a French rock opera; a classical opera, and a play. Read more... |
Three Minutes: A Lengthening review - superb portrait of a vanished worldMonday, 05 December 2022
We hear the projector whirr as the mute 16mm film flows through the sprockets and on to the screen. For three minutes and a little longer we watch children and adults spilling out of buildings, intrigued by the novelty of a camera on their streets. Read more... |
White Noise review - sprawling riffs on love and deathMonday, 05 December 2022
This is Noah Baumbach’s most capacious, overreaching work, corralling Don De Lillo’s novel of catastrophising, neurotic academia into a film jazzily dependent on rhythm, hooked on language and wildly diverse in tone. Read more... |
Tori and Lokita review - a masterpiece of humanist cinemaFriday, 02 December 2022
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes are Belgium’s national conscience. The brothers, who have been sharing the roles of writer-director-producer since their first film in 1996, make humanist dramas about desperate people trying to survive in a harsh world. Read more... |
Neil Young: Harvest Time review - a thrillingly intimate fly-on-the-wall documentaryWednesday, 30 November 2022
“You’re filmin’ a movie or something – can you explain this?” the radio DJ turns to Neil Young, a laugh underpinning his question and setting the scene: light, jovial. “We’re just makin’ a film about…” Young pauses for a second. “I dunno, just the things we wanna film… I’m making it like I make an album, sort of… It’s like… I’m cutting it, instead of… so it’s personal, like an album.” “So some day someone’ll be able to go to a theatre and see it maybe?” the DJ asks. Read more... |
Matilda the Musical review - a dizzying, smartly subversive delightMonday, 28 November 2022
I bow to no one in my affection for Matilda the Musical onstage, which I've loved across multiple iterations, from Stratford-upon-Avon to the West End and Broadway, and numerous cast changes, too. Read more... |
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery review - grand, class-conscious escapismSunday, 27 November 2022
Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel is an even more brightly entertaining puzzle picture, revelling in the old-fashioned glamour of enviably sunny climes and another rogues’ gallery of piquantly deployed film stars. Self-styled world’s greatest detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is again on hand to pick up the inevitably murderous pieces. Read more... |
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