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4/5
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Earth Mama
(2023)
|
Jonathan Romney
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Earth Mama exists at a strange juncture of politically charged statement cinema and borderline new-ageiness, but the quiet audacity of Leaf’s approach makes it something eloquent and singular.
Posted Dec 07, 2023
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5/5
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Trenque Lauquen: Part II
(2022)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
With hints of a Latin American Twin Peaks or X-Files, Trenque Lauquen plucks the bizarre out of the everyday, to laid-back but altogether magical effect.
Posted Dec 07, 2023
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5/5
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Trenque Lauquen: Part I
(2022)
|
Jonathan Romney
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Paredes gives the film a magnetic, if elusive, centre as a seemingly fragile but unshakeably intrepid heroine — at once Alice in Wonderland, Holmesian sleuth and feminist Tintin.
Posted Dec 07, 2023
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3/5
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Wonka
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Success must have embittered the older Wonka; he started out so sweet. Conceptually, it makes sense. But the terrifying scale of pep works only because of Chalamet.
Posted Dec 06, 2023
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3/5
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RENAISSANCE: A FILM BY BEYONCÉ
(2023)
|
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
|
The film works best as confirmation of what we already know: Beyoncé is a fabulous performer.
Posted Dec 01, 2023
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3/5
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Eileen
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
|
Eileen is tethered tightly to a novel: Moshfegh’s own source material, which she adapts with co-scriptwriter husband Luke Goebel. Predictably, the pair are nothing if not faithful to the book, lending this Eileen its murky, circling intrigue.
Posted Nov 30, 2023
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4/5
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We Dare to Dream
(2023)
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Danny Leigh
|
We Dare to Dream keeps a determinedly wide lens. Even so, some details inevitably slip out of frame. But this deeply bittersweet film still contains a wealth of powerful stories.
Posted Nov 30, 2023
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4/5
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Fallen Leaves
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
To paraphrase an old chestnut: if life is tragedy when it happens to me, and comedy when it happens to you, then when it happens to us all, it is Aki Kaurismäki.
Posted Nov 30, 2023
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3/5
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Candy Cane Lane
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
The result swings between manic and sedative, though not always unpleasantly. The saving graces are a zesty Ellis Ross and the enigma that is Murphy, an actor whose comic timing is still casually brilliant.
Posted Nov 30, 2023
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|
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What We Did on Our Holiday
(2014)
|
Nigel Andrews
|
There are a few laughs; a couple of tears; and cinematography that bravely battles for continuity amid the capricious, dual-location British weather.
Posted Nov 28, 2023
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|
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Home Alone
(1990)
|
Nigel Andrews
|
The film is directed with infectious glee and modest malice by Chris Columbus.
Posted Nov 28, 2023
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4/5
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The Eternal Daughter
(2022)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
The Eternal Daughter is hardly designed as a routine tale of the unexpected. It is a story not about spooks, but about sorrow, memory, subtle uncertainties.
Posted Nov 27, 2023
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3/5
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Wish
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
The movie is so busy referencing the classics, it makes itself an afterthought.
Posted Nov 27, 2023
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4/5
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Leave the World Behind
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Leave the World Behind is an addictive parlour game and a chewy treatise on human behaviour.
Posted Nov 27, 2023
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4/5
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Maestro
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Maestro’s excellence lies in being intelligent and bold but also, unashamedly, a movie.
Posted Nov 27, 2023
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|
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The Duellists
(1977)
|
Nigel Andrews
|
The film's strength is in its quietness. It never tries to barnstorm or swashbuckle its way through a story that could so easily look as if it had leaped from the pages of Classics Illustrated.
Posted Nov 21, 2023
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4/5
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David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived
(2023)
|
Dan Einav
|
Through [Holmes'] untainted pride for his work, the film becomes not just a tribute to one individual, but to all those behind the scenes who bring magic to the movies.
Posted Nov 17, 2023
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5/5
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Tish
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
The film is handsome, but Sng keeps nudging the spotlight away from his own creative decisions: back towards the photographs, and the presence on-camera of Murtha’s daughter, Ella, a sensitive interviewer of friends and colleagues.
Posted Nov 16, 2023
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3/5
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Saltburn
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
The film keeps bellowing in your ear. Around now you may again ask yourself that original question: what is this movie meant to be?
Posted Nov 16, 2023
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4/5
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May December
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Watching Portman watch Moore, and Moore watch her back, is fascinating.
Posted Nov 16, 2023
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3/5
|
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
However flimsy the pretext, Lawrence treats it with respect, mining tension and momentum.
Posted Nov 16, 2023
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4/5
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Napoleon
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Scott brings his A game. The film is a gripping, often delightfully lairy slab of pop history, made with mischief, flash and meticulous craft.
Posted Nov 15, 2023
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|
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Flags of Our Fathers
(2006)
|
Nigel Andrews
|
Eastwood drains colour from the battle scenes, giving us newsreel ferocity ragged and raw. Unlike Spielberg, Eastwood nerves himself not to restore the colour later, chromatically or emotionally.
Posted Nov 11, 2023
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4/5
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The Eternal Memory
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Alberdi makes this deceptively slim film hold much of value: happiness and sorrow; a salute to memory; and to film in helping it endure.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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3/5
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Dream Scenario
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Comically and dramatically, it could go here, there or anywhere. And for a while, director Kristoffer Borgli seems able to take us to each of those places at once.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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5/5
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Anatomy of a Fall
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
A death can be pinned down, as here, by details of blood spatter and snow melt. The forensics of life are harder to know.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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3/5
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The Marvels
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
There is sugar-rush charm to at least some of the movie. DaCosta, who previously directed smart horror remake Candyman, is a genuine talent, giving vibrancy to the sitcommy Khans and a sturdy whump to fight scenes.
Posted Nov 08, 2023
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4/5
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Sly
(2023)
|
Dan Einav
|
That we barely notice his omissions is Sly at its slyest.
Posted Nov 03, 2023
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5/5
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How to Have Sex
(2023)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
McKenna-Bruce’s fearless lead is both emotionally exposing and very finely calibrated, slipping from exuberance to anxiety to desperation sometimes in a single shot.
Posted Nov 03, 2023
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3/5
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Dance First
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
The film can be a treat to look at, shot mostly in glowing, milky black and white. And performances range from sturdy to superlative.
Posted Nov 03, 2023
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3/5
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Rustin
(2023)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
Scripted by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black, the film is most compelling in these intimate moments, highlighting Rustin’s tenderness and resilience.
Posted Nov 03, 2023
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3/5
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Fingernails
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
But analogue passion needs a better advert than Anna and Amir. Their will-they-won’t-they might leave you shrugging. And wondering when Hollywood forgot how to make love stories big enough for movies.
Posted Nov 03, 2023
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3/5
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Doctor Jekyll
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
If the result feels scruffy and borderline camp, maybe so much the better. No one here is after a Bafta. The bigger problem is a story too slow-burn for the running time.
Posted Oct 27, 2023
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3/5
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The Killer
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
And the real affront is that The Killer isn’t even a terrible movie. It is worse than that. It is endlessly, grindingly competent.
Posted Oct 26, 2023
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5/5
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Beyond Utopia
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Nothing is a recreation in Beyond Utopia. Instead, every image in this stark and urgent documentary is real, often gathered in mortal danger.
Posted Oct 26, 2023
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3/5
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Cat Person
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Cat Person the film is not a must-see, despite some chewy moments and two poised performances from Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun.
Posted Oct 26, 2023
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2/5
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Foe
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Foe by name, faux by nature.
Posted Oct 19, 2023
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4/5
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Killers of the Flower Moon
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Here in a movie of guilt and conscience, he springs an ending that is at once as glitteringly audacious as anything in his career — and a mea culpa too. For now, upper-case Cinema lives.
Posted Oct 19, 2023
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4/5
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The Pigeon Tunnel
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Le Carré often plays the breezy cynic, but Morris gets to his real fury at the hack theatre of it all.
Posted Oct 19, 2023
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3/5
|
Nyad
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
[Bening] takes just seriously enough a heroine who takes herself very seriously indeed — a woman not borne back ceaselessly into her past, but front-crawling into the future.
Posted Oct 19, 2023
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|
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Goodfellas
(1990)
|
Nigel Andrews
|
Scorsese drags us through the scalding plot, co-scripted by him and Pileggi, without pausing once to bathe our foreheads in either easy comedy or facile moralising. He forces the filmgoer to implicate himself with the characters.
Posted Oct 18, 2023
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4/5
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TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR
(2023)
|
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
|
The former child star belongs on stage. With Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, she owns the big screen too.
Posted Oct 16, 2023
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3/5
|
Silver Dollar Road
(2023)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
The film is sometimes confusing and somewhat baggy structurally but it tells a sobering story. Silver Dollar Road serves as a troubling reminder that racist violence is not always physical, but can be financial and judicial too.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
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3/5
|
Dalíland
(2022)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
Dalíland has its moments, but too often, it’s as saggy as a Camembert timepiece.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
|
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4/5
|
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
(2023)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
The visual poetry is magnificent.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
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2/5
|
The Miracle Club
(2023)
|
Jonathan Romney
|
The Miracle Club is the sort of Sunday afternoon entertainment that is as reassuring as a bowl of warm soup; although Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s film errs on the side of the tepid.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
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|
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Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
(1974)
|
Nigel Andrews
|
In an age starved of good dramatic roles for women, [Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore] is a real winner. Miss Burstyn's performance -- funny, sad, fragile, tough and humorously optimistic by turn -- is the best thing she has done.
Posted Oct 11, 2023
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4/5
|
BlackBerry
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
Yet despite the guffaws, the film (directed by Matt Johnson) is deeper than a mere morality play about villainous money men.
Posted Oct 09, 2023
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2/5
|
The Great Escaper
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
In her last role before her death this summer, she [Glenda Jackson] is the best thing in the film, pin-sharp where it is out of focus.
Posted Oct 09, 2023
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5/5
|
20 Days in Mariupol
(2023)
|
Danny Leigh
|
If the film was “only” a historical record of bravery, carried out in deep personal peril, it would still be valuable. And yet Chernov is determined to tell the whole truth of Mariupol, however bleak, surreal and all-too human.
Posted Oct 09, 2023
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