Author Carmen Paddock

A sense of failure - moral, intellectual, physical - pervades Benediction, Terence Davies’ biopic of the World War I poet (and survivor) Siegfried Sassoon. The older Sassoon attempts solace through...

As Stanton Carlisle leaves an unidentified body and his family home going up in flames, Guillermo del Toro establishes that his latest noir is far from a straight adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946...

It is difficult to make a thriller about history, especially events as well-known as the talks between Chamberlain’s Britain and Hitler’s Germany. Munich: The Edge of War, adapted from Robert Harris’...

As Olivia Colman’s spry narration whisks viewers back to a storybook fin-de-siècle London, Louis Wain struggles to keep his five sisters housed and fed. His one talent – drawing animals – has never been...

Recent cinema has been marked by its reckoning with myths and legends: some based in truth, some overt fabrications, some lost to time, some painfully traceable. Spencer tackles the Royal Family; Dune brings a...

“This is a social experiment!” the peppy school counselor cries, hoping the Jets and Sharks will put aside their war for one dance. The social, economic, and cultural stakes for these teenagers take centre...

The uncanny tips into the unnerving - and then the downright disturbing - with alacrity in Sandra Wollner’s tale of futuristic family trauma. The Trouble With Being Born, in the case of protagonist Ellie, is...

When a film takes every chance at extravagance, the chance of falling is equal or greater to the chance of flying. House of Gucci takes this gamble, and while it might not pay off entirely, the big-budget...

This film was previously reviewed in March 2021 as part of our Berlinale coverage. Not many films can start with three minutes of explicit sex and proceed to be both smarter and more shocking from there,...

Expat florist Jessica wakes to the sudden sound of a mysterious boom. She hears it again walking down the streets of Bogotá, and again having a short rest after visiting her sister Karen in hospital - a...

PhD candidate Sarah (Mensah) sees her young adult life opening up before her. She’s successful in academia - a place she has forged her own path away from her Ghanian, and very Christian, immigrant family....

Absurdity and verisimilitude underpin Neus Ballús’ slice of life comedy following three repairmen on a week of assignments across Barcelona. These run the gamut from mundane to just strange enough to be...

As soon as Richard and Linda arrive at a small middle American church, it is painfully obvious that neither they nor the couple they are meeting (Jay and Gail, who have circled the block a few times) will find...

With prison reform and abolition hot - and necessary - topics today, Antony Spina’s short film imagines a coldly efficient worst case scenario. As the United States prison system reaches capacity, an...

Misery loves company, and this adage holds true in art. While sometimes there is catharsis to be found in a good tragedy, sometimes exploring the ways something or someone can go terribly, irrevocably wrong -...