Film Reviews

The Sense of an Ending review – an enigmatic journey through the past

Adam Sweeting Thursday, 13 April 2017

Julian Barnes’s 2011 novel The Sense of an Ending teased the brains of many a reader with its split time frame and ambiguous conclusion. It was the sort of thing that the interiorised world of fiction can do surpassingly well, and Barnes had handled it skilfully enough to carry off the Man Booker Prize.

The Hatton Garden Job review - extraordinarily dull

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 11 April 2017

There have been plenty of films glamourising diamond geezers who live on the wrong side of the law. Some of them don’t even star Danny Dyer. In the history of British film, rhyming slang plus dodgy morals equals box office. Perhaps there is even a special source of European funding ring-fenced for low-budget films about cockney gangsters. The true story of the old lags who pulled off the biggest...

Aftermath, review - 'Schwarzenegger acts!'

Nick Hasted Saturday, 08 April 2017

Arnie acts! Like “Garbo laughs,” there are some things you learn never to expect, and a credible, committed Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a grief-stricken construction worker is high among them. His role as a melancholy father dealing with his daughter’s impending transformation into a murderous zombie in Maggie (2015) was the first indication of a new direction.

I Am Not Your Negro, review - 'powerful portrait of James Baldwin'

Saskia Baron Saturday, 08 April 2017

The Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro is a chronicle of the pioneering writer and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin. Its director Raoul Peck mirrors the intellectual challenge that Baldwin set his audience: the film demands that you pay close attention and listen to a complex argument backed up visually with diverse social and cultural references.

A Quiet Passion, review - 'Cynthia Nixon is an indrawn Emily Dickinson'

Matt Wolf Friday, 07 April 2017

Is there something about the recessive life of Emily Dickinson that defies dramatisation? I'm beginning to think so after A Quiet Passion. The Terence Davies film may attempt a more authentic take on the unrelievedly bleak, and also great, 19th-century American poet than the stage vehicle about her, The Belle of...

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Neruda, review - 'poetry and politics'

Tom Birchenough Friday, 07 April 2017

Chilean director Pablo Larrain has described Neruda as a “false biopic”, and it’s a film that surprises on many levels in its presentation of Pablo Neruda, the great poet who is his country’s best-known cultural figure. It captivates for the scope of its invention, its ludic combination of reality and artifice, poetry...

City of Tiny Lights, review - 'Riz Ahmed sleuths in self-aware London noir'

David Kettle Wednesday, 05 April 2017

The harsh metallic rasp of a cigarette lighter; a glamorous, vulnerable prostitute in distress; a noble lone crime-fighter standing dejected in the rain. All the familiar tropes of noir are present and correct – in fact, almost self-consciously ticked off – in this entertaining thriller from Pete Travis (Dredd, Endgame). But they’re in a jarringly unfamiliar context: this is...

Mad To Be Normal, review - David Tennant is electric as RD Laing

Markie Robson-Scott Tuesday, 04 April 2017

“What if I’ve made a terrible mistake?” Angie (a flirty, engaging Elizabeth Moss) is about to give birth to psychiatrist RD Laing’s baby, and you have to agree that it’s not the wisest plan.

Free Fire review - 'entertaining massacre with superb cast'

Nick Hasted Friday, 31 March 2017

Ben Wheatley’s sixth film in a prolific, unpredictable career is a shoot-‘em-up in the most literal sense. Setting a superb international cast led by Brie Larson and Cillian Murphy down in a big, grim warehouse, he lets them blast bits off each other for 70 of Free Fire’s 90 minutes.

Graduation review - 'Cannes winner is a bleak Romanian masterpiece'

Tom Birchenough Thursday, 30 March 2017

A decade ago Romanian director Cristian Mungiu took the Palme d’Or at Cannes for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a gruelling abortion drama set in the dying days of the Ceauşescu dictatorship. The cold intensity of that film made it a key work in the remarkable movement that came to be known as the Romanian New Wave, which directed a pitiless eye at the reality of the country as it struggled...

Ghost in the Shell review - 'a mind-bending futuristic dystopia'

Adam Sweeting Wednesday, 29 March 2017

The Japanese Ghost in the Shell phenomenon is celebrating its 25^th birthday, and already has a long history in manga cartoons and animated movies.

Aquarius review - 'the unease of contemporary Brazil'

Tom Birchenough Saturday, 25 March 2017

Politics certainly caught up with Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius. The Brazilian director and his cast appeared at their Cannes competition premiere last year with placards protesting that democracy in their native land was in peril: it was the day after Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff had been suspended. Cut forward a few months, and the film’s autumn release coincided with the announcement...

Life review - 'knuckle-gnawing moments of panic'

Adam Sweeting Thursday, 23 March 2017

In space, no-one can hear you say “hang on, haven’t I seen this before?” The sprawling, labyrinthine space ship full of ducts and passageways for terrifying creatures to hide in, the laid-back crew who’ve become a little too blasé about life in space, the cute little outer-space organism that looks like an exotic novelty pet…

The Lost City of Z

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Percy Fawcett: does the name ring a bell? He ought by rights to sit in the pantheon of boys’ own explorers alongside Cook and Ross, Parry and Franklin, Livingstone and Mungo Park, Scott and Shackleton. Either side of the Great War, he returned again and again to the impenetrable South American interior, in pursuit of an ancient Amazonian civilisation which he called Z.

The Salesman

Matt Wolf Saturday, 18 March 2017

"Attention must be paid," we are famously told near the close of Death of a Salesman. And so it was this year on Oscar night when Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi won his second Academy Award for Best Foreign Film (A Separation was the first), this time for a movie that leans heavily on ...

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Personal Shopper

Saskia Baron Thursday, 16 March 2017

What is Personal Shopper? Is it a haunted-house horror movie, a woman-in-peril thriller? Is it a satire on celebrity and the fetishistic world of fashion or an exercise in existential angst for the generation more familiar with texting than talking? It’s all those things, and more.