Reviews

TV-to-film comedies don’t have the most inspiring of track records. Where writers can pack a 30-minute episode with laughs, they often find themselves stretched very thin across 90 minutes. One of the...

"We’re trying to help you". That’s what Bunny King keeps getting told, while she tries to win back her kids after they are placed into foster care. Her optimism makes her overpromise and underdeliver, and...

In the UK, when someone googles “blue whale challenge”, the first result is a website compiling a series of suicide hotlines readily available for anyone struggling with feelings of self-harm. This...

Robin Feld is battered and bruised. His lone companion in the woods where he lives is a truffle-foraging pig, and she’s been kidnapped by assailants who left Robin bloody on the floor. Without pause – or a...

This film was previously reviewed in January 2021 as part of our Sundance Film Festival coverage. “Horror is already out there, in all of us” is the answer in Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor, which...

Ruth Platt’s Martyrs Lane centres around 10-year-old Leah (Kiera Thompson) who lives in a bustling vicarage with her family. One day, a spectral child (Sienna Sayer) with feathered wings on her back appears...

Night after night, Kate (Gemma-Leah Deveraux) grabs a cheap beer and walks up on stage at her local pub/comedy club. She shoots one self-deprecating joke after another, before heading to a shabby room in the...

“We will remember”, chants a small group of siblings as their mother solemnly proclaims rules as if they were bible verses. “As long as we remember, we remain”, she punctuates as the ritual nears its...

The idea of penance is covered in Mark O'Brien’s The Righteous after a former priest, Frederic (Henry Czerny) and his wife, Ethel Mason (Mimi Kuzyk), mourn the loss of their adopted child. When they’re...

From its title, 100 Minutes would seem to condense the concept of Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (the film’s Russian title makes this connection more explicit). Instead,...

From the minds of John Adams, Toby Poser, and their daughter Zelda Adams, comes Hellbender, a family-focused twist on the usual coming-of-age story, starring Zelda and her sister, Lulu Adams. Lonely,...

The greatest strength and weakness of Monte Verità - Stefan Jäger’s Swiss historical drama set in 1906 Locarno - is the fact that it so excellently, yet uncritically, evokes its time. Modern art, dance,...

Nélie (Lyna Khoudri) sees no future for herself on the streets of 1914 Paris. A chance encounter with a Red Cross nurse, however, seems a ticket out of prostitution, and her resourceful work on the front...

This film was previously reviewed in March 2021 as part of our Berlinale coverage. Cuneiform expert Alma works at Berlin’s prestigious Pergamon Museum, but like most academics she needs that last bit of...

This film was previously reviewed in October 2020 as part of our London Film Festival coverage. With much of the world experiencing some degree of political and social unrest, it would seem a pertinent time...