Film Reviews

The Girl with All the Gifts

Adam Sweeting Wednesday, 21 September 2016

Not having read Mike Carey's source novel, I enjoyed the luxury of settling down with my bag of Warner Bros promotional popcorn having no idea where this story was headed. And for the first third of the movie, this was a real bonus.

Scottish Mussel

David Kettle Monday, 19 September 2016

A single, lonely star might seem harsh for what is first-time director (and writer, and lead) Talulah Riley’s woeful debut feature. And it’s true that, if nothing else, the St Trinian’s franchise star packs a lot into her Scottish Mussel.

Comment

The Clan

Tom Birchenough Friday, 16 September 2016

Latin America has learnt from harsh experience just what the legacy of dictatorship involves, when the structure itself may have been dismantled but the psychology that it engendered remains.

Blair Witch

Nick Hasted Friday, 16 September 2016

Primal fear of the forest plus new technology made The Blair Witch Project a micro-budget phenomenon in 1999. Its “found footage” premise, with student film-makers’ tapes showing their gradual unhinging by a witch-haunted Maryland forest, has been widely copied. This and a poorly received sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, stymied further attempts to franchise what seemed to be a freak hit.

Bridget Jones's Baby

Veronica Lee Wednesday, 14 September 2016

If you happened to catch the second part of the Bridget Jones story – Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004, directed by Beeban Kidron) - on terrestrial television recently, or have read the character's creator Helen Fielding's novel Mad About the Boy, you may be confused by the opening sequence of the third instalment in the film franchise, Bridget Jones's Baby.

Two Women

Matt Wolf Tuesday, 13 September 2016

Ralph Fiennes has long felt at home in the Russian repertoire, whether onstage in Fathers and Sons near the start of his career or, in 1997, taking the Almeida's Ivanov to Moscow as the first UK company to bring Chekhov home, as it were.

Ben-Hur

Jasper Rees Friday, 09 September 2016

Ben-Hur, the remake of the remake, is an epic misfire starring no one you’ve ever heard of apart from, inevitably, Morgan Freeman. What in heaven, you may ponder if accidentally trapped at a screening, were the producers thinking? Their rationale is writ large in the film's no-messing-about opening sequence. Like its own trailer naming the elephant in the room, this Ben-Hur heads straight to the chariot race. It's some mission statement.

Hell or High Water

Adam Sweeting Thursday, 08 September 2016

Having recently seen Chris Pine reprising his role as the headstrong but heroic Captain James T Kirk in the latest Star Trek, it's a revelation to find him in this gritty tale of crime, punishment, righted wrongs and moral ambiguity. To his credit, he doesn't wilt in the glare of his co-stars Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster, both of whom are giving it both barrels here.

The Blue Room

Markie Robson-Scott Wednesday, 07 September 2016

"Did she bite you often?" Julien Gahyde (Mathieu Amalric) is being questioned about his affair in minute detail, over and over again, by lawyers and detectives. This is an ingenious flashback device. We don’t know yet what crime has been committed, but his lover Esther (Stéphanie Cléau) draws blood right at the start of this claustrophobic and ambiguous film, set in a provincial French town somewhere near Poitiers.

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years

james Woodall Tuesday, 06 September 2016

It could be a book, film, TV or radio piece, essay or exhibition. If it’s about or based on The Beatles, the question is always the same: how on earth can anything new be said? In the case of Ron Howard’s Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years, surprisingly quite a lot, is the answer.

Comment

Café Society

Matt Wolf Friday, 02 September 2016

Whatever one thinks of Café Society - and responses to Woody Allen's latest as ever are likely to be divided - few will dispute the visual lustre that the legendary cameraman Vittorio Storaro has brought to this tale of love upended and deferred, set in 1930s Hollywood to a period-perfect soundtrack pulsing with the music of Rodgers and Hart.

Every frame has a ready-made, natural shimmer that communicates...

Things to Come

Tom Birchenough Friday, 02 September 2016

One of the many astonishing things in Mia Hansen-Løve’s fifth film is watching Isabelle Huppert hold back tears. In one scene they smear almost involuntarily down her face, in another she transforms them into a bark of nervous laughter. Huppert plays Nathalie Chazeaux, a sixty-something Paris philosophy teacher, who paces the film with almost frantic speed while her life unravels around her.

Julieta

Markie Robson-Scott Thursday, 25 August 2016

Red, the colour of blood, passion, love and hate, is Almodóvar’s trademark and in Julieta, his 20^th film (and surely one of his most visually lustrous), it’s never far away. It’s there in the opening sequence, a close-up of thick folds of red fabric moving like a curtain. Then we see, as the camera cuts away, that it’s a dress worn by Julieta, a woman in her fifties (Emma Suarez, pictured below).

Almost Holy

Tom Birchenough Friday, 19 August 2016

Tough love doesn’t get much tougher. Ukrainian priest Gennadiy Mokhnenko has spent two decades trying to keep children off the streets, and away from drugs, in his hometown Mariupol, using methods that elsewhere in the world would count as vigilante.

The Childhood of a Leader

Markie Robson-Scott Thursday, 18 August 2016

A tousled-haired child wearing wings is framed in a candlelit casement window. It’s a beautiful, Georges de La Tour-like scene. He’s the angel of the Lord in a nativity play rehearsal: unto us a son is born, peace on earth. But hark – why is the soundtrack so piercing and Psycho-ish? And why has this little angel (Tom Sweet) left the rehearsal to throw stones at people in the darkness?

Lights Out

Nick Hasted Thursday, 18 August 2016

A woman cowers beneath her bedclothes, building a useless barrier against the thing she hears creeping and scraping across the room, the thing that only appears when she turns off the light. This is the most primal image of domestic terror in the homemade short film whose viral success took its Swedish director, David F Sandberg, to Hollywood.