Guest of Honour – Review Tom Bond June 4, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in September 2019 as part of our Venice Film Festival coverage. It’s a worrying sign when the quirky adventures of David Thewlis, Health Inspector, are more entertaining...
The Whistlers – Review Tom Bond May 8, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in May 2019 as part of our Cannes Film Festival coverage. Codes and communication are vital parts of any crime film. After all, it's much easier to double-cross your...
Best Buys For the Best Films of the 2010s Tom Bond March 24, 2020 Shop With the 2010s in the rearview mirror we took the chance to look back at our favourite films of the decade and rank them. You can see where we ended up here, and I hope you'll agree it's a great...
Portrait of a Lady on Fire – Review Tom Bond February 13, 2020 Reviews Originally reviewed as part of our Cannes Film Festival coverage in May 2019. Portraying someone in a work of art inevitably means gathering intimate details about their life. The way they blush when...
ORWAV Oscars 2020 – The Results Tom Bond February 9, 2020 Analysis, Features, One Off Not to brag, but we had a pretty great set of nominations for the ORWAV Oscars this year. We took the Academy's top picks enhanced them with some underappreciated gems, especially of the uncut variety. So...
Parasite – Review Tom Bond February 7, 2020 Reviews Originally reviewed as part of our Cannes Film Festival coverage in May 2019. There’s a lesser version of this film full of simple, signposted twists, broad, caricatured performances, and crude, obvious...
ORWAV Oscars 2020: The Nominations Tom Bond February 3, 2020 Analysis, Features, One Off Oscars season has arrived early this year, and with it comes one of the most eclectic sets of nominees we've seen in quite some time. Big hitters include a long-take (not one-take) WWI film, a serious...
ORWAV’s Top 20 films of 2019: #3 – Eighth Grade Tom Bond December 31, 2019 Analysis, Features, Top 10 Kids today, eh? They don’t know they’re born. They’ve never had it better, but they spend all their time glued to their phones, living their lives through social media. That’s the easy, lazy criticism...
Knives Out – Review Tom Bond November 25, 2019 Reviews Whodunnits are never just about who did it. They are about the dynamic between head and heart – how and why someone takes the ultimate decision to kill another. Writer-director Rian Johnson understands this...
Saturday Fiction – Venice 2019 Review Tom Bond September 8, 2019 Reviews Spy thrillers are one genre where it’s very easy to have too much of a good thing. They’re powered by secrets and twists, but Saturday Fiction is burdened with too much of the former at the start, and too...
The King – Venice 2019 Review Tom Bond September 4, 2019 Reviews Defeat the French at Agincourt? In that body? From his opening scenes as a spoilt emo princeling, whoring his way around Eastcheap, it’s hard to buy the French-American Timothée Chalamet as the legendary...
Giants Being Lonely – Venice 2019 Review Tom Bond September 3, 2019 Reviews It’s always promising when a film begins and you can’t immediately tell if it’s meant to be documentary or fiction. The ambiguity suggests a filmmaker ready to push their narrative in unusual directions...
Effetto Domino – Venice 2019 Review Tom Bond September 3, 2019 Reviews Send a domino tumbling to the table and you know what will happen next. It’s chaotic, inevitable, and the perfect metaphor for how the financial crash played out across continents. Effetto Domino (Domino...
Pain and Glory – Review Tom Bond August 19, 2019 Reviews It’s easy to throw a film like Pain and Glory into all sorts of boxes – boxes marked ‘self-portrait’, ‘self-indulgent’ and ‘love letter to cinema’ – but that would be to cheapen a beguiling...
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – Review Tom Bond August 14, 2019 Reviews This review was originally published as part of our Cannes Festival coverage on 23/05/2019. It’s impossible to view Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as anything other than a filmmaker in the twilight of his...