Author Jack Blackwell

A sensationally funny and affecting dark comedy, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri arrived at Venice just as the festival was hitting a slump, and reinvigorated it with a fiery passion. Martin...

There are a lot of reasons to be disappointed by Scott Cooper’s Hostiles. Firstly, it’s simply a mediocre film, stuffed with filler dialogue and a surfeit of slow-motion closeups substituting for any real...

Though there are many micro-genres encompassed by the umbrella term of "Western", most of these films can be generally grouped into either "cowboy showdown" (Shane, High Noon, Unforgiven) or "wilderness...

This was originally reviewed on 01/09/17 as part of Venice Film Festival. Mass migration is one of the biggest international crises of the last decade, with more people displaced now than at any point...

This was originally reviewed on 26/09/17 as part of London Film Festival. It's a strange cinematic coincidence, but the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings have proved fertile ground for two excellent recent...

Finding the right actors for a film is often a gruelling process, even when using the most conventional channels. To abandon these mainstream techniques in the name of authenticity can sometimes seem like...

In the time between the release of the sublime first Paddington film in 2014 and the debut of its sequel this year, the UK has become a darker place. Brexit and isolationist xenophobia hang heavy in the air,...

Though Greta Gerwig has had plentiful scripting experience to complement her always exciting acting career, Lady Bird marks her debut in the world of directing (and writing alone). We’re very pleased to...

Fittingly for a film about changing partners, The Lovers is an intriguing and eclectic mix of old and new. With its simple direction and old-fashioned score, it’s rather reminiscent of classical romances...

With The Rider, writer-director Chloé Zhao blurs the line between fact and fiction, casting a real South Dakota cowboy family as themselves to give a deeply empathetic insight into this harsh way of life....

In the first seconds of Warwick Thornton’s outback Western Sweet Country a screaming brawl happens off screen, the camera lingering on a pot about to boil over. It’s a plain statement of intent from a film...

As an insight into 18th-century medical practices, Mademoiselle Paradis is an intriguing and informative history lesson. As a film, however, it’s less of a success, veering between tepid and manic. Based on...

The Drummer and the Keeper kicks off with the striking image of a completely bare-arsed man dragging a sofa into the middle of a beach before lighting it on fire. This is Gabriel (Dermot Murphy), a talented...

A gently amusing road movie with a warm worldview, decent sense of silliness, and lack of any challenges to its audience, Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s Going West is one of those European films that feels...

For its first two thirds, François Ozon’s Amant Double feels like the most stereotypically French film ever made. Starring androgynous ingénue Chloé (Marine Vacth) who works in a modern art gallery and...