Author Carmen Paddock

The youth road trip movie is a storied genre, and Take Me Somewhere Nice carves out its spot by contrasting a modern setting with a retro production design. The film follows Alma (Sara Luna Zoric), a Bosnian...

Joe Robert Cole’s second feature eschews the usual techniques for establishing audience rapport with its central character: before viewers properly get to know aspiring rapper Jakhor (Ashton Sanders), he...

This film was previously reviewed as part of our Berlinale Film Festival coverage in February 2020. It is still dark when Jane (Julia Garner) gets in a taxi outside her modest flat. She dozes when she can...

In his 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Joe Wright attempted to undo the long shadow cast by Colin Firth’s pitch perfect Mr Darcy in the 1995 BBC miniseries. Instead of watching his romantic hero...

There may be no such thing as a wholly original story, but many narratives earn memorability by bringing new perspectives and urgency to themes and tales heard a thousand times before. Rising High (Betonrausch...

In this new series of articles, our writers are watching classic films for the first time. Here, Carmen catches up on 1984's Paris, Texas. Paris, Texas is grounded in the endless, expansive topographies...

Berlin, 1979. Jürgen Baldiga moves from a rural mining province to Berlin, quickly becoming one of the city’s foremost queer artists. After contracting HIV in 1984, as the AIDS crisis sweeps Berlin’s...

In her feature film directorial debut, Kelly Walker frames the opening scene so that viewers realise that Jane’s (Jeanette Maus) life is about to be horrifically and irrevocably turned upside down before...

The story behind Xiang Ji’s feature film debut – involving lies to Chinese governmental censors, an eighteen-day shoot, and time in the editing suite days after giving birth – is almost as fascinating as...

In this new series of articles, our writers are watching classic films for the first time. We begin with Carmen catching up on Mary Harron's American Psycho. Mary Harron’s brutal satire of corporate...

This film was previously reviewed as part of our Glasgow Film Festival coverage in March 2020. As the truth becomes a more and more contentious issue in contemporary media, The Truth feels a throwback to a...

The intersection of identities, oppressions, and politics run through Romas Zabarauskas’ latest feature, which follows a Lithuanian corporate lawyer as he finds himself at personal and professional limits...

Philippa Lowthorpe’s latest feature immediately roots itself in its historical moment: before its opening title Misbehaviour has cut between divorced London mother interviewing for a spot at university, a...

This film was previously reviewed as part of our London Film Festival coverage in October 2019. Nick Rowland’s feature debut, based on a short story, starts with explosive, explicit violence that...

Melina León weaves events and references from throughout Peru’s tumultuous 1980s into a feature debut that hauntingly renders the era’s political and economic anxieties through an intensely personal lens....