Film Reviews
The Glass Castle review - Woody steals the film by a wide marginFriday, 06 October 2017
People who live in glass castles might be wary of throwing stones. That clearly was not the case with American magazine journalist Jeannette Walls, who made of her often harrowing childhood a best-selling memoir that has found its inevitable way to the screen. A would-be Daddy Dearest with a hefty dollop of Captain Fantastic thrown into the mix, what would seem to be a star vehicle... Read more... |
LFF 2017: Breathe review - overdosing on good intentionsThursday, 05 October 2017
The curtain-raiser for the 61st London Film Festival was Breathe, not only Andy Serkis’s debut as a director, but also a film based on the family experiences of its producer, Jonathan Cavendish. Read more... |
Blade Runner 2049 review - powerful but needs more soulThursday, 05 October 2017
Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner from 1982 stands as an all-time sci-fi classic, so anybody trying to make a sequel (even 35 years later) needs galaxy-sized vision, an army of high-powered collaborators and balls of steel. Is director Denis Villeneuve the man for the job? Read more... |
The Reagan Show review - engaging but frustratingMonday, 02 October 2017
The Reagan administration produced as much video content as the previous five administrations combined. That’s the claim early on in The Reagan Show, an engaging but ultimately frustrating documentary compiled entirely from archive footage by co-directors Sierra Pettengill and Pacho Velez. Read more... |
Goodbye Christopher Robin review - no escape for a boy and his bearFriday, 29 September 2017
“Isn’t it funny/How a bear likes honey?/Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!/I wonder why he does.” Those immortal words, said by the bear of very little brain in chapter one of Winnie-the-Pooh, don’t sound quite the same after watching a shell-shocked AA Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) react to bees buzzing when out for walk in the Hundred Acre Wood with his son (Will Tilston, making his debut, pictured below... Read more... |
Home Again review - Reese Witherspoon romcom is divorced from realityFriday, 29 September 2017
A charming assemblage of performers are left pretty much high and dry by Home Again, an LA-based romcom so determinedly glossy that each frame seems more squeaky-clean and unreal than the next. Intended as a star vehicle for Reese Witherspoon, this debut effort from filmmaker Hallie Meyers-... Read more... |
Zoology review - the tale of a tailTuesday, 26 September 2017
Russia has its own rich traditions of satire and the grotesque, but at first glance we may wonder whether in his new film Zoology Ivan I Tverdovsky, a director who, still to turn 30, certainly belongs to the new generation of that country’s filmmakers, has borrowed a leaf from another master of such forms, Franz Kafka. Not unlike the change experienced by Josef K in the Czech writer’... Read more... |
On Body and Soul review - terrible beauty, and beastsSaturday, 23 September 2017
Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi’s On Body and Soul (Testrol es lelekrol) opens on a scene of cold. It’s beautiful, a winter forest landscape, deserted except for two deer: a huge stag and a small doe react to one another in the snow, a tentative interaction of eyes and noses, nothing more. There’s a tenderness to what we see, the vulnerability of the female set against the power of the... Read more... |
Borg/McEnroe review - Wimbledon face-off is entertaining if incompleteThursday, 21 September 2017
A spate of tennis-themed films gets off to a vivid if incomplete start with Borg/McEnroe, which recreates the run-up to the Wimbledon Men's Final in 1980 with often-thrilling clarity and (as much as is possible for those who will of course recall the outcome) suspense. Read more... |
Kingsman: The Golden Circle review - too much of everythingWednesday, 20 September 2017
Take one off-the-wall spoof spy thriller that becomes an unexpected hit. Add a bunch of gratuitous guest stars (mostly American). Stretch formula to 140 minutes. Stand clear and wait for the box office stampede. Read more... |
mother! review - Darren Aronofsky dares, frustrates and boresFriday, 15 September 2017
Breathing through an oxygen mask with a busted diaphragm and rib after shooting a single scene in mother!, Jennifer Lawrence had rarely suffered more for her art. Nor have we. Read more... |
Victoria and Abdul review - Judi Dench's Queen Victoria retread battles creaky scriptFriday, 15 September 2017
The charm quickly palls in Victoria and Abdul, a watery sequel of sorts to Mrs Brown that salvages what lustre it can from its octogenarian star, the indefatigable Judi Dench. Illuminating a little-known friendship between Queen Victoria in her waning years and the Indian servant, Abdul Karim (Ali... Read more... |
Insyriated review - claustrophobic terror in a Damascus war zoneFriday, 08 September 2017
It doesn’t take long, I think, to work out the associations of the title of Insyriated: we are surely being presented with a variation of “incarceration”, one tinged by the very specific context of the conflict that has ravaged Syria for six years now. But there’s a certain ambiguity at the centre of Belgian... Read more... |
IT review - killer clown is kids' stuffThursday, 07 September 2017
Stephen King’s IT attempted ultimate terror, cutting far deeper than a killer clown. Read more... |
God's Own Country review - a raw, rural masterpieceFriday, 01 September 2017
There are many outstanding things in writer-director Francis Lee’s remarkable first feature, and prime among them is the sense that nature herself has a distinct presence in the story. It brings home how rarely we see life on the land depicted in British cinema with any credibility. God's Own... Read more... |
Una review - 'Blackbird' adaptation loses its stage intensityFriday, 01 September 2017
Add Una to the ever-lengthening list of mediocre films adapted from fine plays. In London and New York, David Harrower’s Blackbird was an entirely harrowing two-hander: a symbiotic portrait of the damage wrought by desire that also happened to function as a first-class vehicle for actors as disparate as... Read more... |
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