Category: Films
Unicorns review – drama of queer south Asian club culture with added superstar drag queens
Welsh-Egyptian film-maker Sally El Hosaini made a supremely confident debut in 2012 with My Brother the Devil, about a young gay Muslim drug dealer in [more…]
Problemista review – quirky hipster comedy lets Tilda Swinton go for the laughs
An explosion of pass-agg hipster quirkiness is what’s offered here, an everything-everywhere-all-at-onceuniverse of cutesy vulnerability and pseudo-childlike ersatz charm. Salvadorian-American comic and SNL alumnus Julio [more…]
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F review – fish-out-of-water Eddie Murphy chases past glories
Eddie Murphy isn’t finished yet – as he proved with his barnstormer of a performance as Blaxploitation pioneer Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite Is My [more…]
Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to open Venice film festival
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Tim Burton’s sequel to his 1988 hit Beetlejuice, has been selected as the opening film of the Venice film festival. The screening will [more…]
Younger review – rousing study of female athletes excelling in their 60s and beyond
‘I like to time myself and then I know if I am improving or not,” says one of the women in this hour-long documentary about [more…]
Orlando, My Political Biography review – Woolf’s trans hero gets a 21st-century mashup
Paul B Preciado’s documentary is a jeu d’ésprit; maybe in fact a jeu d’ésprit about a jeu d’ésprit. It is a meditation on Virginia Woolf’s [more…]
From The Idea of You to A Family Affair: the summer of age-gap romances
A Family Affair, a new romcom from Netflix, knows the precisely calibrated fantasy it’s offering: a romance between a celebrity and a normal person, a [more…]
Loop Track review – no escape for tormented hiker on horror trek to creature-feature hell
“I just wanted some quiet. But it’s so quiet out here. And all I can hear is my brain.” New Zealand hiker Ian (Thomas Sainsbury) [more…]
Despicable Me 4 review – Gru goes into witness protection to keep Minion magic alive
Here’s something new in the saga of supervillain ordinariness featuring Gru the goofy animated megabaddie (voiced by Steve Carell), with his comedy bald head, pointy [more…]
Portrait of My Father review – mysterious death of father is start-point of riveting film
What are the pieces that make up a life? This thorny question lies at the heart of Juan Ignacio Fernández Hoppe’s riveting, emotional documentary, whose [more…]
