Reviews

It’s been six years since Whitney Houston was found dead in a hotel bathtub. Just as when she was alive, Houston has had novels, books, newspaper headlines, music and now movies focused on her decline....

Ideal Home follows Paul (Paul Rudd) and Erasmus (Steve Coogan). Paul produces Erasmus’ cooking show, featuring cultural appropriation and oblivious decadence, highlighting the couple’s separation from the...

Parties, drugs, and hedonism are the ruling principles of Yung’s four female protagonists. Director Henning Gronkowski uses his film to dive into the underbelly of Berlin’s youth culture, drawing from his...

With growing fears that the world is entering into a new Cold War and Donald Trump roaming the halls of the White House, the ideas presented in The Purge feel more relevant and timely than ever. But where The...

Carmen and Lola offers a love story between two Roma girls facing the deeply homophobic mindset of their cultural background, which is both particular due to their heritage, and universal, as its equivalents...

All Good (Alles ist gut) is not just the title of Eva Trobisch’s first feature film, but also Janne’s (Schwarz) defiant attitude towards being a victim of rape. She is a thoroughly modern woman, intent on...

Gianni Zanasi comedy Lucia’s Grace (Troppa grazia) is an odd film, picking up many threads but ultimately falling short of tying them all together. Nonetheless, Zanasi’s work managed to win the award for...

Andrea Pallaoro’s second feature Hannah portrays a woman on a precipice, struggling with the crimes her husband has committed and the choices she has made. First and foremost, it is a showcase for Charlotte...

Susanne Lacy’s documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts offers an intimate and emotional portrait of the multi-faceted actress turned activist in the eponymous five acts, each named after the person who held the...

https://vimeo.com/channels/bestofthemonth/258828793 In What Is Beauty? Filmmaker Anna Ginsburg runs us through a two minute history of the definition of the beautiful woman in art and media, all the way...

This film was previously reviewed on 12/10/2017 as part of London Film Festival. The third feature by filmmaking partners Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead blends Lovecraftian horror and intrigue with...

Adrift brings nothing new to the tradition of lost-at-sea movies, despite director Baltasar Kormákur’s prior experience with the genre – his similarly premised The Deep picked up a raft of European film...

This film was previously reviewed on 19/02/2018 as part of Berlinale 2018. Charming and inconsequential, The Bookshop perfectly evokes the sensation of losing yourself in a good book. Nothing too heavy –...

Best known for launching the career of Jennifer Lawrence with Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik’s first film since that 2010 entry is another excellent story of hidden, isolated Americans with a breakout central...

Sicario 2: Soldado is an all-you-can-eat buffet of Trumpian anxieties – Mexican drug cartels are smuggling terrorists from the Middle East across the border into Texas. CIA enforcer Matt Graver (Josh Brolin)...