Reviews

Skate Kitchen is a fantastically evocative low-key tale of a teenage girl’s coming of age within the skate subculture of New York City. Of course, this subject matter recalls Drew Barrymore’s Ellen...

This review was originally published as part of our London Film Festival coverage on 27/09/2018. It’s still relatively rare for internet stars to make a successful leap into cinema, but that is, for the...

It must have been a fascinating pitch. Eli Roth, director of blood-hungry, gore-fascinated Hostel and The Green Inferno, wants to make a family-friendly number, adapting a much-loved novel from 1973. The pitch...

Director Lenny Abrahamson follows his Oscar-nominated Room by opening things up to a mansion with this period Gothic mystery. Said mansion is the dilapidated Hundreds Hall in post-War rural Warwickshire, and...

This film was previously reviewed on 14/10/17 as part of the London Film Festival. Faces Places is a documentary made by Agnès Varda and JR to accompany their large-scale ‘Inside Out’ photography...

Don’t be fooled by trailers - A Simple Favour is far more than a Gone Girl knock-off. Heavily marketed as coming from ‘the dark side of Paul Feig,’ in practice it feels like Feig has remade a François...

The tastefulness of marking the 50th anniversary of the Manson murders with a slew of films, TV shows and documentaries is highly debatable, but if you’re going to do it, at least Mary Harron is a more...

With so many great heist movies already in existence, many even involving the great Michael Caine (see: The Italian Job, Gambit, Get Carter), it’s a wonder that Marsh felt the need to tell a story so...

These days it’s not hard to sympathise with the feeling that everything is on fire and everything is not fine. As a second-hand viewer there is more than enough bigotry, injustice and brutality to witness,...

This review was originally published as part of our Toronto International Film Festival coverage on 16/09/2018. Diamantino cannot really be pinned down as one genre. Mixing sci-fi, comedy, fantasy and much...

Crazy Rich Asians begins like an all-Asian Gossip Girl yet ascends to very dizzy heights, offering a worthy twenty-first century update of Ang Lee’s ‘90s romantic comedies. Once Rachel (Wu) and Nick...

Few documentary makers have a flair for cinematic storytelling quite like Bart Layton. His blistering debut, The Imposter, feels like a thriller despite being mostly a collection of talking head interviews....

Zhang Yimou makes his return after 2016’s rather disappointing The Great Wall – the most expensive production made in China – with Shadow, a dark tale of a warrior who uses his lookalike in an attempt...

This review was originally published as part of our Toronto International Film Festival coverage on 9/9/18. Chinese first time director Bai Xue makes her mark on the film world with The Crossing, a coming...

The Predator has landed back on Earth, and this time his target is a small autistic boy, his father, and a ragtag bunch of soldiers all receiving psychiatric treatment. Together, they prepare to hunt down the...