film reviews
Saskia Baron

This is a tasteful but somewhat unmoving adaptation of writer Helen MacDonald’s memoir, which in 2014 won the Samuel Johnson and Costa book prizes. MacDonald was an academic lecturing in the history and philosophy of science at Cambridge, when their father, Alisdair MacDonald the press photographer, died suddenly.  

Markie Robson-Scott

Lionel (Paul Mescal; played as a child by Leo Cocovinis) has perfect pitch and is able to name the note his mother coughs each morning. He can harmonise with the barking of the dog across the field. “Early on I thought everyone could see sound.” Sounds bring shapes, colours, tastes too: “B minor and my mouth turned bitter.”

Helen Hawkins

To the rich but faintly melancholy strains of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no 23, the latest release from Korean director Park Chan-wook sets up its protagonists for us, a carefree family enjoying a barbecue in their garden, with a mischievous ironic tone from the outset.

Nick Hasted

The last GP in Britain tries to heal his Rage virus-ravaged country in this sequel not only to Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later but his Olympics NHS tribute. Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) is civilisation’s softly spoken but ferociously principled keeper, stoking its embers even in the monstrous Infected, while confronting evil people visually and morally modelled on Jimmy Savile. 

Adam Sweeting

The pitch for this movie might have been “Heat meets Miami Vice”, and it’s to the credit of writer/director Joe Carnahan that the finished result can stand toe to toe wi

Adam Sweeting

Brendan Fraser’s mournful, basset-hound face finds a loving home in this affecting fable from director/writer Hikari.

Sarah Kent

State of Statelessness is the brainchild of the Drung Tibetan Filmmakers’ Collective based in Dharamshala, home to the Dalai Lama and spiritual heart of the Tibetan community in exile. Four short films, each by a different director, address what it means to live in the diaspora without a homeland. And like a short story, each film offers a glimpse into lives spent in perpetual exile.

James Saynor

We might simply call it a dilemma, but Hollywood screenwriters call it a “crisis decision”, or maybe sometimes a “swivel”. It’s when there’s an impossible choice, in movies sublime or ridiculous, whether it’s Rick choosing between Ilsa and beating the Nazis in Casablanca, or – in the latter category – pointless superheroes choosing between a baby and the entire globe in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

James Saynor

When Hamlet the Dane talked about “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”, it was typical of the way that Shakespeare generalised. The writer didn’t let you infer too much about himself. So when he specified one or two of the thousand shocks in the same speech (“To be, or not to be”), they involved rather impersonal, evasive things like “the law’s delay” and “the insolence of office”. In this, his most famous soliloquy, Shakespeare remained all things to everyone – his “universal” quality that made his literary name while eternally frustrating biographers.

Markie Robson-Scott

“So then I go and I make another cup of coffee and two pieces of toast with raspberry jelly and now I’m going to call Allen Ginsberg at exactly noon. Because he does his meditations and they told me to call him either at 11 at night or after 12.”