Reviews

This film was previously reviewed in October 2016 as part of our LFF coverage. Both frothy and melancholy, The Bacchus Lady dives into its unexpected tale of one of South Korea’s infamous "Bacchus ladies"...

Inspired by author Haruki Murakami’s short story of the same title, writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Cannes Best Screenplay winner Drive My Car is an avant-garde metatextual curation interweaving...

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...

Will the COVID-19 pandemic ever end? Not if cinema has its way. For reasons that are bemusing at best, the film and television industry seems determined to preserve the misery of the last 18 months in...

This film was previously reviewed in October 2020 as part of our LFF coverage. For a comedy-drama that hovers between life and death, Never Gonna Snow Again is achingly beautiful. Szumowska and Engerlt...

Almost fifty years since The Velvet Underground went their separate ways, their legacy only grows. Now understood as pivotal in pushing the boundaries of music at the time, Todd Haynes’ documentary tells the...

This film was previously reviewed in September 2021 as part of our Venice Film Festival coverage. The Last Duel, Ridley Scott’s latest men-with-swords epic, is a medieval courtly tale for the #MeToo...

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 -...

Dedicated to trapping the audience in the inexhaustible cycle of anxiety, the aptly titled All My Friends Hate Me allows terror and comedy to unspool simultaneously, both leaving the audience at a distance and...

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s effortlessly beautiful anthology film comprised of three vignettes: a morbidly amusing love triangle, a seduction trap that goes awry, and...

Ali is a small-time hustler, earning commission every time he brings a big spender to a nightclub, and Lana is the daughter of the most respected stylist - and single mother - in east Amman. But this modern...