Reviews

Even in a world where a reality TV star has a shot at entering the White House, the photograph of Elvis Presley shaking hands with Richard Nixon stands out as one of the weirder moments in American politics....

It’s quite possible that The Conjuring 2 is the most sentimental horror film of recent years. The Conjuring films set out to create a horrifying experience without almost any bloodshed or death; the first...

The Secret Life of Pets’ first fifteen minutes are perky and imaginative as the animal inhabitants of a block of New York flats wave their owners off to work before commencing their own daily routines. This...

Sticky Notes shares its premise with Chris Kelly’s Other People, but mood and characters make it a totally different experience. Like David in Kelly’s film, Athena (Leslie) pauses her attempt to make it in...

Although Slash is undeniably influenced by countless sensitive-boy coming-of-age films like The Perks of Being a Wallflower or The Way Way Back, it is insidiously charming. Both Michael Johnston and Hannah...

At its best River is an exciting, pulse-pumping and fast-paced chase movie, but nothing more than adrenaline fuels its narrative. John, the fugitive doctor, is sketchily archetypal, but if writer-director...

A film is a complex machine of moving parts, and the best built don’t creak but turn smoothly, keeping mechanical secrets veiled and showing only the fictional world they seek to create. Adult Life Skills is...

With its repetitive visuals of water and insistent voiceover, My Name is Emily at first threatens to be claustrophobic and indulgently contemplative. Yet it develops into a well-constructed road movie, and,...

Though Tom Hanks’ performance in Ithaca is surely the briefest he’s ever given, it’s one reason why Meg Ryan’s directing debut feels like it could have been a Spielberg movie. Casting repeat co-stars...

Gods of Egypt contains all the trappings of the genre you’d expect. Mighty monsters, treacherous tombs, giant animal-robots fighting on spaceships, the standard stuff. In fact, by the time these ‘gods’...

Frida Wallberg is a Swedish World Champion boxer; the film starts with her defending her title with success, but then follows her journey as her second fight as defending champion almost costs her her life....

Oliver Stone reckoned that the first casualty of war is innocence, and if George Gittoes’ documentary Snow Monkey is anything to go by, he was right. Gittoes, a war photographer who has spent decades in war...

Sonita is a powerful documentary about a fourteen year old Afghanistan refugee, now living in Iran, as she dreams of becoming a female rapper in a country where women singing is illegal and her family demands...

An original and leftfield look at the Afro-Eurasian migrant crisis of recent years, Fire at Sea is, more than anything, a showcase for the extraordinary intelligence of its director, Gianfranco Rosi. The...

Tale of Tales is either very much your film or it isn’t in the slightest. Almost certainly destined for cult adoration, Matteo Garrone’s latest feature is a rare oddity: imaginative, arresting, baffling...