Reviews

County Lines is an impressive feature debut for director Henry Blake, who based the story on real incidents from his time as a youth worker. The film is simultaneously a gritty and unpleasant crime drama about...

Billie Piper’s audacious directorial debut follows imperfect – sometimes downright unpleasant – people. Mandy (Piper) makes do in an office full of not-so-passive aggressions, and her seven-year-old...

It’s hard to think of a better recent example of dad-approved lazy-afternoon viewing than James Mangold’s Le Mans ‘66. Its combination of old-fashioned motorsports, tough-guy heroes, and loving...

Anthony McCarten has, in recent years, made his name as one of the premier screenwriters of mass appeal but mediocre historical films like Darkest Hour and Bohemian Rhapsody. His latest, The Two Popes, teams...

Like this autumn’s Marriage Story, Premature follows a relationship between two artists whose personal lives blend into their creative endeavours – but in this film the beginning, end, and a possible path...

Thank the cinematic gods a studio gave Taika Waititi the money to make what is – on paper – a disaster waiting to happen. Yet in his hands, a comedy about a Hitler Youth misfit and his imaginary friend...

‘Gravity, but Victorian’, is an intriguing pitch and, visually, The Aeronauts delivers on this strange, exciting promise. As Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne journey through the skies in a giant hot air...

It is hard to explain exactly what Luce is. Initially a serious look at the pressure put on high-achieving black students in US schools, it shifts so many times – even into trashy thriller territory – that...

Every year, you get at least one film clearly designed purely for the purpose of nabbing an Oscar for its star. In 2019, Judy is that film. Renée Zellweger’s heartfelt take on Judy Garland immediately...

It’s impossible to go into Joker without the heavy fog of its insufferable, endless online discourse clouding your view. The ridiculous moral panics and equally silly impassioned defences have already made...

Syllas Tzoumerkas' third film is as slippery as the eels that form its backbone. It's intense, brutal and surprising - full of strange asides and meandering paths, held together by the suffocating setting of...

With Marriage Story prominent on the festival circuit, LFF's other divorce drama, Hope Gap, threatens to be overshadowed. Sadly, it's probably for the best. It's a muddled film; a painful little knot with...

The stories we tell ourselves and to others define the way we understand the world, and The Last Black Man in San Francisco uses this ever-changing mythos to expertly evoke an ever-changing city. Based on the...

"With that hair," comments a local pilgrim to a visiting stranger with long curls and a full beard, "you're either sick, a wacko, or a scientist." It sums up Alaa Eddine Aljem's gentle farce about faith...

It's taken 20 years for Michael Caton-Jones to bring his adaptation of Alan Warner's novel The Sopranos to the big screen - and it's worth the wait. It's already had a second life as a stage musical...