Edward Lawrenson
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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First Man (2018) |
Running at over two hours and 20 minutes, this earnest, dour, Oscar-needy film left me earthbound. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Oct 11, 2018
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Columbus (2017) |
This is a quiet but tremendously accomplished debut that owes a lot to the magisterial subtlety of Japanese director Yasujirô Ozu. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Oct 04, 2018
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The Gospel According to André (2017) |
What gives the film its more lasting poignancy is Talley's discussion of growing up in an African-American community in North Carolina. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Sep 27, 2018
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The Rider (2017) |
This is a film of subtle, unspoken grace notes, an intimate and deeply moving portrait of both Blackburn and the community of which he is part. It is an understated gem of a film, and marks Zhao as a major talent. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Sep 18, 2018
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The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) |
This is a lovely, richly shaded portrait of adolescence in all its shifting moods, shot through with a melancholy sweetness and sly, intoxicating humour. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Sep 06, 2018
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Cold War (2018) |
This is a remarkable achievement - sumptuous, ambitious, intelligent and with a knockout soundtrack. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Aug 30, 2018
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BlacKkKlansman (2018) |
It is galvanising cinema, made with an urgency and anger that leaps from the screen. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Aug 23, 2018
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The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018) |
The Eyes of Orson Welles is terrific, a rich, intelligent, adoring embrace of its subject. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Aug 17, 2018
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Heathers (1989) |
Mostly this is gleeful nastiness crafted with jagged irony and with a captivating performance by Winona Ryder at its centre. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Aug 15, 2018
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The Apparition (2018) |
There's a sense of intrigue here, but Giannoli struggles to sustain our interest. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Aug 06, 2018
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Generation Wealth (2018) |
This is a poignant, insightful and worrying dispatch of the state things today. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jul 20, 2018
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In the Fade (2017) |
It's not a perfect movie... still there is an unanswerable force to this angry, unblinking depiction of the consequences of far-right violence in Europe today. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jul 16, 2018
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First Reformed (2017) |
Hawke responds to the demands of the role fearlessly: his is a sombre, powerfully restrained performance, and throughout he wears an expression of clenched gravitas that seems to hold at bay the pain and unrest roiling inside. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jul 13, 2018
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Mary Shelley (2017) |
Mary Shelley the person was a formidable, inspiring genius. Mary Shelley the film disappoints. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jul 10, 2018
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Studio 54: The Documentary (2018) |
You have to applaud the steadiness of purpose in Tyrnauer's approach: from the mayhem of the dancefloor he has extracted a...poignant thesis about its significance to the wider culture of the day. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jun 15, 2018
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McQueen (2018) |
"McQueen" is ultimately a poignant and stirring tribute to the designer. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jun 07, 2018
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Double Lover (2017) |
Filmed with silky elegance L'Amant Double is outwardly a model of arthouse refinement, but it lurches from one improbable set-up to another like a potboiler written to a midnight deadline. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jun 05, 2018
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Zama (2017) |
It's a thrillingly layered film, and is perhaps best experienced by surrendering to its intoxicating strangeness. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jun 05, 2018
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On Chesil Beach (2017) |
On Chesil Beach is an ambitious film, and it largely works thanks to the exquisitely pitched performances of Ronan and Howle. - The Big Issue
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| Posted May 17, 2018
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Redoubtable (2017) |
[Jean Luc] Godard himself called the film "stupid" and I have a hard time disagreeing. - The Big Issue
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| Posted May 11, 2018
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New Town Utopia (2017) |
Unlikely though that sounds, it leaves a rich impression: New Town Utopia is an intelligent, poignant and delicately ambiguous portrait of a place routinely dismissed as a provincial backwater. - The Big Issue
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| Posted May 05, 2018
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Beast (2017) |
This is made with unrestrained panache. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Apr 27, 2018
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BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017) |
There's a poignant undertow to the rush. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Apr 06, 2018
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Isle of Dogs (2018) |
After a while such a fussy, just-so attention to detail grates - and there's only so much calculated whimsy that I can take. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Mar 29, 2018
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Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (2018) |
The film sketches the rollercoaster trajectory of [Westwood's] career in bold strokes. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Mar 23, 2018
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The Square (2017) |
The Square is a fiercely witty comedy that requires and rewards patience from us...but there is also something blunt and ill-conceived about The Square's central thrust....the film is principally a social critique, but it's heavy-handed, even moralistic. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Mar 16, 2018
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You Were Never Really Here (2017) |
You Were Never Really Here is brilliantly made, daringly structured and invested with jumpy, lurid lyricism. But this stylistic triumph fails to resonate emotionally. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Mar 08, 2018
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A Fantastic Woman (2017) |
Marina battles on, a force of nature, despite the elements gathered in opposition, and this big-hearted, sweepingly realised melodrama plays like an intoxicating tribute to that fighting spirit. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Mar 02, 2018
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Dark River (2017) |
Dark River is a bracing reminder of Barnard's talent, but enter its depths with caution. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Feb 22, 2018
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Lady Bird (2017) |
The results borrow freely from French New Wave, American teen drama, and more - but the great triumph of Lady Bird is that it remains in Gerwig's voice: it's fresh, funny, and lastingly poignant. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Feb 15, 2018
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Loveless (2017) |
Loveless is brilliantly accomplished and yet I found its unsparing pessimism hard going. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Feb 08, 2018
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Phantom Thread (2017) |
There are shades of Hitchcock, notably Rebecca and Notorious. But this is a film to savour not for its narrative twists but its air of thickening psychological complexity. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Feb 02, 2018
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Last Flag Flying (2017) |
But Last Flag Flying disappoints. By comparison to The Last Detail, it's bland and underpowered, with a script that lacks the earlier movie's poetry or razory wit. And on its own terms it struggles. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jan 26, 2018
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The Final Year (2017) |
The Final Year... is a kind of disaster movie, the chronicle of an impending catastrophe that creeps up on its victims. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jan 19, 2018
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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) |
Sometimes you have the feeling you're watching a solid Netflix TV drama, an impression underscored by the film's ramblingly episodic structure. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Jan 11, 2018
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Mountains May Depart (2015) |
A breathtaking performance by Zhao Tao. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Dec 14, 2017
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Song of Granite (2017) |
An elliptic, bracingly experimental feature told mostly in Gaelic. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Dec 14, 2017
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The Prince of Nothingwood (2017) |
[Salim] Shaheen is a force of nature, and a true cinematic maverick, and the documentary is a hoot. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Dec 14, 2017
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Mountain (2017) |
From the makers of Sherpa, this visually breathtaking documentary features vertigo-inducing shots of climbers scaling various high-altitude summits, accompanied by a soaring orchestral score. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Dec 14, 2017
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Human Flow (2017) |
It is sombre and (to risk a rather pompous word) necessary viewing. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Dec 07, 2017
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Happy End (2017) |
As with so many portraits of family dysfunction there's a sense of unease here, one that Haneke amplifies brilliantly. It is a collection of disquieting fragments, discordant snapshots that create a mood of unsettling menace, of impending catastrophe. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Nov 30, 2017
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Good Time (2017) |
It's a sly and vivid dispatch from the struggling margins of Trump's America. And it's Robert Pattinson on peak form, giving a performance of desperate ferocity and trapped intensity. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Nov 16, 2017
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Paddington 2 (2017) |
It's hard to resist this understated, delicate, winningly eccentric movie. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Nov 09, 2017
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The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) |
Colin Farrell's heart surgeon faces a nightmarish ultimatum, making Yorgos Lanthimos' latest one of this year's most bold and interesting films. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Nov 03, 2017
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Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017) |
... the result is an up-close, surprisingly unguarded portrait of a compelling artist. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Oct 27, 2017
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I Am Not a Witch (2017) |
But this is still a wildly promising first feature from [Rungano] Nyoni, and marks her as a filmmaker to watch. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Oct 20, 2017
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Loving Vincent (2017) |
A remarkable stylistic achievement, then, but Loving Vincent has its flaws, and I can't say that its script is equal to the triumphant visual technique on display. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Oct 13, 2017
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The Reagan Show (2017) |
The Reagan Show will offer a peculiarly potent hit of nostalgia and cultural cringe. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Oct 06, 2017
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Young Frankenstein (1974) |
It's Mel Brooks at his most daft and puerile: sophisticated and silly, a black-and-white art film with schlong jokes. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Sep 29, 2017
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Borg vs. McEnroe (2017) |
[Shia] LaBeouf is great value as McEnroe in his hair-trigger mood. - The Big Issue
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| Posted Sep 22, 2017
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