Author Cathy Brennan

Horacia (Charo Santos-Concio), the titular Woman Who Left, is released from prison after 30 years when it turns out her friend was the one who actually committed the crime. With much of her life already gone,...

By framing its story through recovered mobile phone footage discovered by unseen investigators, Malaria immediately hooks in its audience. Set mainly in Tehran, director Parviz Shahbazi utilises the mobile...

In the wake of The Babadook new ghost stories should be welcomed with open arms. However, Never Ever squanders its potential by being utterly tedious. The first half of Never Ever actually intrigues as...

Director/writer/star Emir Kusturica demands attention from the opening frames of On the Milky Road through his stylistic idiosyncrasies. Snakes drink milk and clocks bite people in his war-torn...

40 years ago, In the Realm of the Senses was released, sparking uproar and an obscenity trial. The film's notoriety stems from its explicit, unsimulated sex scenes, yet director Nagisa Ôshima was not...

Ana Lily Amirpour falls victim to the sophomore slump with The Bad Batch. Like her strong debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, she creates a strange world for her characters to inhabit. However, a languid...

Adapting the eponymous novel by Guy de Maupassant, Une Vie is a textured film that may just be too dour for its own good. Charting Jeanne’s (Judith Chelma) descent from landowners’ daughter to a...

From the very first frame, it’s clear that The Journey is more of an ITV drama than a film. Cheap in its look and firmly middlebrow, there’s nothing of note to recommend it. Timothy Spall transforms...

Gukôroku is the most frustrating kind of film, because so many of its elements work only to be let down by a story that does not warrant this low level of filmmaking. Gukôroku entices the audience with...

Andrei Konchalovsky offers a cross-section of Europe under Nazi rule through his three main characters: French-Nazi collaborator Jules (Phillippe Duqesne), Russian Resistance member Olga (Julia Vysotskaya),...

In Questi Giorni, four young friends go on a trip to Belgrade. Like any road journey film, the characters get to work out their baggage through their travels, which here include illness, relationships and...

Teenage pregnancy is often seen as a calamity in the developed world. Comedy director Roan Johnson takes this mindset in Piuma and crafts well-told story jam-packed with laughter. The first thing...

Acting, starring and written by Laurie Simmons, My Art feels like a rich person’s vanity project. Simmons plays a version of herself called Ellie; an artist who spends the summer at her friends house...

It is normally quite exciting if you don’t know where a film is going. In Tommaso however, that uncertainty is frustrating. Opening with its titular speaking to his therapist about his relationship...

30 years in the making makes a decent marketing line for Terrence Malick’s latest film Voyage of Time. With such a line and a pedigree name attached, it can’t help but underwhelm even if it does indeed...