Mary Queen of Scots – Review Tom Bond January 17, 2019 Reviews It’s hard to imagine a juicier historical story to film. Two rare female leaders in 16th century Britain, locked in fights for their crowns, their heritage and their lives – all while trying to steal each...
The Favourite – Review Tom Bond January 1, 2019 Reviews This review was originally published as part of our Venice Film Festival coverage on 31/08/2018. Yorgos Lanthimos and his tragicomic experiments have been a favourite of arthouse cinema for years now, from...
ORWAV’s Top 20 Films of 2018: #4 – Lady Bird Tom Bond December 28, 2018 Analysis, Features, Top 10 There’s a line in a song I think about a lot. I think it might be true. You can change your clothes/ Change your hairstyle, your friends, cities, continents/ But sooner or later your own self will always...
The House that Jack Built – Review Tom Bond December 18, 2018 Reviews This review was originally published as part of our Cannes Film Festival coverage on 16/05/2018. Lars Von Trier is back with The House that Jack Built, a 150-minute grotesque epic going deep inside the mind...
Creed II – Review Tom Bond November 30, 2018 Reviews Creed managed the rarest of things, successfully handing the franchise baton on to a new generation. In comparison, surely Creed II should be an easy knockout? The screenwriting team hit fundamental...
Shoplifters – Review Tom Bond November 23, 2018 Reviews This film was previously reviewed on 15/05/2018 as part of the Cannes Film Festival. Hirokazu Kore-eda is on familiar ground with Shoplifters, the story of an unconventional family unit on the fringes of...
Charlie Says – Venice 2018 Review Tom Bond September 20, 2018 Reviews The tastefulness of marking the 50th anniversary of the Manson murders with a slew of films, TV shows and documentaries is highly debatable, but if you’re going to do it, at least Mary Harron is a more...
What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire? – Venice 2018 Review Tom Bond September 18, 2018 Reviews These days it’s not hard to sympathise with the feeling that everything is on fire and everything is not fine. As a second-hand viewer there is more than enough bigotry, injustice and brutality to witness,...
Sunset – Venice 2018 Review Tom Bond September 7, 2018 Reviews László Nemes’ previous film, Son of Saul, was a harrowing and visceral fever dream, dragging the viewer through the charnel house of a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Much of its power came from...
The Announcement – Venice 2018 Review Tom Bond September 2, 2018 Reviews When political instability becomes the norm, what happens to the fear and drama it normally inspires? The Announcement, directed by Mahmut Fazil Coskun, puts the basics of social interaction under the...
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – Venice 2018 Review Tom Bond September 1, 2018 Reviews The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’s origins as a Netflix miniseries are obvious to see from its opening seconds, laying out a series of short stories about life and death in the wild wild west. We all know the...
The Other Side of the Wind – Venice 2018 Review Tom Bond August 31, 2018 Reviews It’s an uncanny feeling to be watching a new Orson Welles film, over thirty years after the man’s death. The Other Side of the Wind is a Frankenstein’s Monster of a film and is every bit as haphazard,...
The Favourite – Venice 2018 Review Tom Bond August 31, 2018 Reviews Yorgos Lanthimos and his tragicomic experiments have been a favourite of arthouse cinema for years now, from the bloody Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer to the oddly tender The Lobster. If his...
BlacKkKlansman – Review Tom Bond August 25, 2018 Reviews In 2012, when Obama was president and racism in America seemed to be fading, Django Unchained featured a notorious scene with the Ku Klux Klan. Squabbling about eyeholes and spare bags, the white supremacist...
Where Are They Now? The Inbetweeners Tom Bond August 14, 2018 Features, Nostalgia, Where Are They Now? Ask any Britcom star and they'll tell you just how hard it is to make the transition from domestic TV to the silver screen. At its simplest level there's just something about the structure of a great sitcom...