Reviews

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...

Nick Cave has had a traumatic year. He has faced the unfathomable, in the death of his 15 year-old son Arthur, and the road he’s traveled has been long and excruciatingly painful. One More Time with Feeling...

As always, Laika Entertainment (Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls) have released one of the most beautifully and intricately designed films of the year, this time offering a mythical quest narrative in a...

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...

Starting at breakneck pace (literally, ‘cos they’re in chariots, see?!), this somewhat baffling re-remake of Ben-Hur skips over the subtleties of gradual character development and setup in its bid to...

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...