tue 07/10/2025

Film Reviews

Marriage Story review - superior weepie

Demetrios Matheou

Forty years after the classic, multi-Oscar winning Kramer v Kramer comes another divorce drama involving two young Americans and a son caught in the crossfire. And this one is even better. 

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Last Christmas review - for the stocking, not the tree

Demetrios Matheou

Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke stars in this awkward but sweet Yuletide romcom as Kate, a chaotic, George Michael obsessed twenty-something in London who’s lost her way following a serious illness.

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Le Mans '66 review - nicely revved up

Demetrios Matheou

For a sports movie to work for more than just the fans, it has to have drama off the pitch, track or field, with characters to root for, personal demons, a good underdog. Based on a true story that also involves high-speed danger and tragedy, James Mangold’s Le Mans ‘66 duly obliges.

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The Good Liar review - the grey pound dipped in acid

Nick Hasted

Ian McKellen, his Mr Holmes director Bill Condon and Helen Mirren play clever, nasty games with conman clichés and presumptions about the elderly in this sometimes absurdly twisty thriller.

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Midway review - gung-ho heroes battle moribund script

Adam Sweeting

Director Roland Emmerich has been trying to make this movie since the 1990s, and battled hard to raise its $100m budget from individual investors. But why?

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The Irishman review - mobster masterclass

Demetrios Matheou

Much has been made of Martin Scorsese’s recent dismissal of Marvel films.

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The Aeronauts review - up, up and okay

Joseph Walsh

Wild Rose director Tom Harper blends fact with fiction in a charming Victorian ballooning adventure that reunites Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones for the first time since The Theory of Everything.

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Brittany Runs a Marathon review - believable body positive parable

Nick Hasted

Brittany (Jillian Bell) is the unhappily overweight life of the party, numbing her lonely life with booze and acerbic one-liners as she nears 30.

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After the Wedding review - a high-tension gut punch

Owen Richards

How long can one decision follow you? How long can you hide from it? This is what underpins After the Wedding, a remake of Susanne Bier’s Efter brylluppet.

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Sorry We Missed You review – Ken Loach's unapologetic assault on the gig economy

Demetrios Matheou

If the recent period of British history that has involved recession, austerity, the hostile environment and Brexit is to have chroniclers, who better than Ken Loach and his trusty screenwriter Paul Laverty. Their blend of carefully researched social realism and nail-biting melodrama is angry, shaming, essential.

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Doctor Sleep review - heartfelt return to the Overlook Hotel

Nick Hasted

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining ended in ice, Stephen King’s in fire which consumed the Overlook Hotel. King’s frightening, emotionally rich novel was written by an alcoholic about an alcoholic, Jack Torrance, and his suffering family.

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The Last Black Man in San Francisco review - gentle gentrification blues

Nick Hasted

San Francisco has rarely looked more unattainably golden than in Joe Talbot’s Sundance prize-winning gentrification parable.

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By the Grace of God review - a dark, meticulous drama from François Ozon

Tom Birchenough

This is a departure in every sense for François Ozon.

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The Addams Family review - more treat than trick

Joseph Walsh

Starting life as a comic strip in 1938, The Addams Family seems to have reinvented itself for every generation. It’s the story of an odd-ball family from ‘The old country’ (where that is geographically located is by-the-by), who love the grim and gothic. Their outlandish ways were neatly juxtaposed against the wholesome values of American suburbia.

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Monos review - teenage guerrillas raising havoc

Markie Robson-Scott

In the opening scene of Alejandro Landes’s strange, beautiful but finally unsatisfying Monos, eight teenage guerrillas are playing football blindfold on a high mountain plateau. Why the blindfolds? Perhaps to warn us not to expect any light to be thrown on whys and wherefores in this unsettling, visually stunning film, with its echoes of Lord of the Flies and Apocalypse Now.

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Terminator: Dark Fate review – look who's back

Demetrios Matheou

Sentient machines have taken over the Earth. The leader of the human rebellion is so effective that a robotic ‘terminator’ is sent back in time to ensure he’s never born. A guardian follows, to ensure he is. We’ve been here before. 

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