fri 25/07/2025

Film Reviews

Eileen review - a dank fairytale film noir

Graham Fuller

As the title character in Eileen, set in a miserable Massachusetts backwater in the days before Christmas 1964, Thomasin McKenzie plays a depressed hybrid of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty who’s awakened by a patently fake Princess Charming-cum-Hitchcock blonde.

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Fallen Leaves review - deliciously dry Finnish romcom

Saskia Baron

Fallen Leaves is Aki Kaurismäki’s 20th film, the one the Finnish director made after he said he’d retired from cinema in 2017 and frankly, if you didn’t like his earlier films, you shouldn’t bother with this one. But if you’re a fan (and I am and so was the Cannes jury which gave it the Fipresci prize), Fallen Leaves is an utter pleasure from beginning to end. 

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Queendom review - an LGBTQ+ performance artist takes to the streets of Moscow in protest

Sarah Kent

It takes a brave or a foolhardy person to walk the streets wearing almost nothing but barbed wire and platform shoes, especially when the occasion is an anti-war demo in Moscow and the penalty for joining the march is up to 15 years in jail.

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The Eternal Daughter review - tricksy ghost story with a poignant emotional core

Helen Hawkins

Joanna Hogg has made a film that resolves itself backwards: what happens in the final reel recasts what you have just seen completely. It’s something of a departure from her previous films in style, but equally probing and moving.

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Maestro review - the infinite variety of Leonard Bernstein

David Nice

The only seriously false note about Maestro is its title. Yes, Bernstein was masterly as a conductor, and Bradley Cooper gives it his best shot. But he was no master of his life as a whole. Maybe the title should have been something like Lenny and Felicia (you think of something better).

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Lost in the Night review - hunting a mother's killer

James Saynor

“Everything is legal if you have the money,” states the world-weary protagonist of this new film by the Mexican-American director Amat Escalante.

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A Stitch in Time review - feelgood Aussie indie with an undernourished script

Helen Hawkins

There’s a faint whiff of Strictly Ballroom about Sasha Hadden’s Australian indie A Stitch in Time, another tale of people in later life rekindling lost dreams and a long-buried love while nurturing younger folk with the same passions. Here, though, this love is expressed in dressmaking rather than foxtrots and quicksteps. 

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Napoleon review - Sir Ridley Scott's historical epic is wide but not deep

Adam Sweeting

Sir Ridley Scott has taken umbrage at the French critics who weren’t too impressed with his new movie. Not only do they not like his film, but the French “don’t even like themselves”, according to the dyspeptic auteur.

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Mami Wata review – a gorgeous, strange African fable

Nick Hasted

Mami Wata is the female West African water god still worshipped in Iyi, a fragile, matriarchal village redoubt against modernity. Writer-director C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s third film makes Iyi a battleground for African identity, in a glistening black-and-white fable played out to the sea’s constant, low crash and wash.

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May December review - a queasy take on sexual exploitation

Saskia Baron

There’s much to admire  here – May December features impressive performances from Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, and director Todd Haynes shows his mastery of classic Sirkian style. But disappointingly, this comes across as a movie that aims to critique media exploitation of a scandal while indulging in its own manipulation.  

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Is There Anybody Out There? review - autobiographical documentary on disability

Saskia Baron

Ella Glendining has made an impressive documentary debut with the autobiographical essay, Is There Anybody Out There? Born without hip joints and very short thigh bones, we first encounter her as a perky, confident little girl walking in the woods near her home, in video footage filmed by her parents. They were aware from the first pregnancy scan that she was different and have done an exemplary job of ensuring that she had as happy a childhood as possible.

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Saltburn review - an uneven gothic romp

James Saynor

This seems to be a season for films majoring on bisexuality, with the awards round encompassing Ira Sachs’s Passages, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro and Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, a story of high-class high jinks in a modern twist on Evelyn’s Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.

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Tish review - haunting portrait of a driven working-class photographer

Graham Fuller

Paul Sng’s documentary Tish is one of the best British films of 2023 – both a heartfelt tribute to the life and work of the late photographer Tish (born Patricia) Murtha and a timely reminder of the war waged on the nation’s industrial working-class by the Thatcher government and its successors. Murtha’s death in 2013 was not unrelated to that war.

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Driving Madeleine review - a Paris taxi ride reveals a harrowing life story

Markie Robson-Scott

Charles (French comedian Dany Boon), a jaded taxi driver in Paris, is stressed out. He owes money, the points on his license are mounting up, he barely has time to see his wife and daughter. When he gets a booking for a far-flung ride involving an old lady, he’s not enthusiastic even though the pay’s good. All joie de vivre has left him.

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Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin review – close-up on chaos

Nick Hasted

Pete Doherty’s notorious tabloid image as Kate Moss’s junkie rock star boyfriend blessedly faded following that relationship’s end, stopping short of Amy Winehouse territory. Katia deVidas’s documentary focuses on that addiction through his preferred self-image as a latter-day Rimbaud, a punk poet more suited to his current French home. The result is remarkably unvarnished, but narrowly framed.

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Anatomy of a Fall review - gripping psychological thriller set in the French Alps

Markie Robson-Scott

There’s a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer, said Graham Greene, and that ice plays a part in French director Justine Triet’s superb fourth feature, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

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