Category: Films
Rebuilding review – Josh O’Connor is a stoic rancher in sensitive, if slight, wildfire drama
The difficult question of how one truly recovers from the devastating loss that a wildfire can bring is one that more and more are confronting. [more…]
By the Stream review – Hong Sang-soo’s likably restrained pastoral comedy of campus life
The startlingly prolific Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo has, apparently with the ease of simply taking another breath, produced another of his lo-fi urban-pastoral comedies; these [more…]
‘I briefly wondered whether I’d accidentally consumed shrooms’: the psychedelia – and science – of full dome cinema
Since emerging in their present form in the 90s, full dome films have occupied a curious place in the cinema landscape. Exhibited at planetariums on [more…]
Dark Match review – satanism meets wrestling in backwoods grindhouse gorefest
Presumably there are easier ways to invoke Satan than organising a multi-bout wrestling tournament-cum-occult ceremony, but practicalities are low on the priority list of Lowell [more…]
Is assisted dying a ‘clear and present danger’ to people with disabilities? New US film asks tough questions
In 1983, Elizabeth Bouvia, a 26-year-old woman in California with a disability, tried to starve herself to death in a hospital. “I’ve made a confident, [more…]
Elevation review – high-altitude monster thriller offers twist on the Quiet Place formula
An efficient post-apocalyptic thriller, Elevation subscribes to the Quiet Place school of action streamlining: in this case, the remaining 5% of humanity must stay above [more…]
‘Wonderfully sentimental’: why Defending Your Life is my feelgood movie
In a world where we venerate the actor-writer-director (Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen etc), the great Albert Brooks still feels widely underappreciated. His voice work in [more…]
Actor Michele Austin: ‘Mike Leigh has a wicked sense of humour’
Born in London, Michele Austin trained at Rose Bruford College before beginning a wide-ranging career on television, film and stage. She was Yvonne Hemmingway in [more…]
All That’s Left of You review – deeply moving epic of Palestinian intergenerational trauma
All That’s Left of You, Palestinian American film-maker Cherien Dabis’s wrenching portrait of intergenerational trauma, begins its 75-year tale of displacement as the great epics [more…]
Sky Force review – Akshay Kumar stands tall in threadbare air-war flagwaver
The hope is that the Hindi mainstream is learning from its current spell of commercial turbulence. The evidence, alas, suggests otherwise. For Republic day in [more…]
