Reviews

How do you make art didactic? And, if you can, can it prevent history from repeating itself? Radu Jude's "I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians" tackles these questions alongside a heavier task:...

To oversimplify, Celia Rico Clavellino’s deeply personal debut feature is an affecting tale about a daughter who craves change, and a mother who fears it. We think we’re about to watch the age-old story...

Truth is a fickle concept at the best of times, but during a war sponsored by one of the world’s greatest purveyors of Fake News, the very notions of facts and rationality go flying out the window. This is...

As the cold air sets in, the flies that refuse to die off are the most annoying – and the most persistent. Olmo Omerzu’s coming-of-age gem dwells on these flies, and his characters’ mix of irritation and...

Most of us will one day be made to face our own mediocrity, contend with the fact we’re only ordinary, and find ways to fit into a world where we are merely spectators to more powerful, exceptional...

A fair few films have used the narrative trick of blurring reality and fiction, but almost none of them have done it as confusingly and pointlessly as Touch Me Not. A perverse and neurotic study of intimacy,...

"We are all stardust" is the shiny, pseudo-metaphysical mantra of Carol Morley's Out of Blue, a phrase rendered meaningless when tacked onto this crime drama. The cosmos, dark matter, stardust, and parallel...

This review was originally published as part of our London Films Festival coverage on 16/10/2018. Wild Rose's Rose-Lynn (Jessie Buckley) has all the trappings of a country star. A single mother and an...

You can’t even look at a still of Destroyer without discussing the elephant in the room. Nicole Kidman blows everything else out of the water – the confidence in her performance is astounding. While no...

You know the dude in Starbucks, the one with the thick-rimmed glasses, chequered shirt and a macchiato who’s forever working on his screenplay? Well, Life Itself is that very screenplay, and somehow it’s...

The Wild Pear Tree is not a film you can watch or recommend casually. Like all Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s work, it’s enormously long, serious, and dense with dialogue, requiring over three hours of concentration...

If you’ve ever suffered the sudden and untimely death of a loved one, there’s much that will resonate in Last Child, director Dong-seok Shin’s slow-burning debut feature. The marriage of Sungcheol and...

Returned to the world after four months under ISIS captivity, war reporter Gabriel (Roman Kolinka) comes back to Paris a man transformed and ill at ease with the haunting familiarities and the discomfiting...

The latest gem from Mamoru Hosoda is deceptively simple: a young boy named Kun worries about being eclipsed by his newborn baby sister. Through episodic little vignettes, we join Kun on an array of magical...

They got Al Capone on his taxes. In the '90s, the South Korean government went swinging for Kim Jong-il right where it hurts: the money. The Spy Gone North takes this convoluted true story of espionage, trade...