Film Reviews
LFF 2020: Supernova review – Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth shine as couple on the roadThursday, 15 October 2020
Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of pleasure to be had watching Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth as a mature couple pootling around the UK in their humble camper van. They bicker about the satnav voice, argue the merits of the shipping forecast, and both give such convincing performances that you’d think they’d been together for decades. Read more... |
Time review - a stunning portait of enduring loveThursday, 15 October 2020
Sometimes in fictional cinema, a character can seem so strong, so righteous, that you begin to doubt the reality of the piece. How can anyone be that good when faced with such hardship? Perhaps these thoughts make us feel better about ourselves, and what we do with our lives. But we can make no excuses with Time, a documentary about a woman so remarkable that it could only be true. Read more... |
LFF 2020: One Night in Miami review - Kemp Powers's play makes the leap to the big screenSunday, 11 October 2020
Set on February 25 1964, Kemp Powers’s 2013 play One Night in Miami put newly-crowned World Heavyweight Champion Cassius Clay in a motel room with soul singer Sam Cooke, superstar NFL footballer Jim Brown and spokesman for the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X. Read more... |
The Lie review - icily intriguing until it isn'tSaturday, 10 October 2020
Moral reckonings don't come much more serious than the one that propels The Lie, in which a family must deal with a murder perpetrated by their daughter. Will Jay (a weary-looking Peter Sarsgaard) and Rebecca (the wonderful Mireille Enos) hand 15-year-old Kayla (Joey King) over to the authorities? Read more... |
LFF 2020: Mangrove review – rousing, resonant blast from the pastFriday, 09 October 2020
Hats off to the BFI London Film Festival for producing an edition – slimmed down but lip-smacking – in this most terrible, uncertain of years. And it couldn’t have opened with a better film than this blisteringly powerful, viscerally topical drama by Steve McQueen. Read more... |
Kajillionaire review - quirks, strangeness and charm from Miranda JulyFriday, 09 October 2020
Old Dolio, the oddly named central character played, wonderfully, by Evan Rachel Wood in Miranda July’s third feature film, learned to forge signatures before she could write. “In fact that’s how she learned to write,” says her father Robert (the great Richard Jenkins) proudly. Read more... |
Saint Maud review - creepy and strangely topical psychological horrorThursday, 08 October 2020
It only takes a few seconds of Saint Maud – dripping blood, a dead body contorted on a gurney, a young woman’s deranged face staring at an insect on the ceiling, an industrial clamour more likely to score the gates of hell than the pearly ones – to make us realise that the film’s title is a tad ironic. Read more... |
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet review - is the end nigh?Thursday, 08 October 2020
At 93-years-old and with a career that spans nearly 60 years, David Attenborough has spent a lifetime transporting audiences from the comfort of their sofas to the dazzling, often bewildering, majesty of the natural world. Read more... |
On the Rocks review - an unlikely detective duoWednesday, 07 October 2020
On the Rocks has an unusual premise. Laura (Rashida Jones), a New York City novelist and mother of two young daughters, suspects her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) is having an affair with a co-worker, Fiona (Jessica Henwick). Laura confides her fears to Felix (Bill Murray) and they’re soon zipping around Manhattan at night pursuing Dean and Fiona in Felix’s dyspeptic Alfa Romeo. Read more... |
Rialto review - beautifully acted but relentlessSaturday, 03 October 2020
What news on the rialto? Not much of particular buoyancy or light in the Peter Mackie Burns film Rialto, which takes a grimly focused view of a married Irishman's struggle with his same-sex leanings. Read more... |
Eternal Beauty review - imagination in every frameFriday, 02 October 2020
Barring a few outliers, British indies tend to follow the same formula: serious subjects told seriously. Whether it’s a council estate, a rural farm, or a seaside town, you can always rely on that trademark tension and realism we Brits do so well. Read more... |
The Trial Of The Chicago 7 review – blistering docudrama that speaks to our timesThursday, 01 October 2020
Aaron Sorkin’s latest powerhouse drama couldn’t come at a more opportune moment. Read more... |
Miss Juneteenth review - a ray of Texan sunshineFriday, 25 September 2020
Beauty queen pageants have long been ripe for parody, from their plastic glamour to the Machiavellian competitiveness. Miss Juneteenth opts for a much more nuanced approach, using the pageant as a focal point for a mother and daughter navigating their difficult present and possible future. Read more... |
Monsoon review - like something almost being saidThursday, 24 September 2020
Building very promisingly on the achievement of his debut feature Lilting from six years ago, in Monsoon Hong Khaou has crafted a delicate study of displacement and loss, one that’s all the more memorable for being understated. Read more... |
Enola Holmes review – a new Sherlock-related franchise is afootWednesday, 23 September 2020
It’s no secret that Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation lays claim to more appearances on screen than any other fictional character. Over the past several decades, we’ve seen Sherlock as a pugilist action-hero, a modern-day sleuth, and in a painfully unfunny slapstick guise. Read more... |
Bill & Ted Face the Music review - modestly delightfulSaturday, 19 September 2020
Beavis and Butthead’s vicious grunge-era gormlessness remains interred, Wayne and Garth (and their stars’ careers) are too superannuated to revive. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
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