Reviews

It’s rare to leave the cinema wishing a 90-minute film was longer, but Meryem Benm'Barek’s Sofia shows enough promise to demand a more substantial story. She wastes no time getting into the action, going...

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Asako I & II is an endearing Japanese rom-com with a high-concept premise. Asako (Erika Karata) falls in love with Baku (Masashiro Higashide) at university, but he walks out of her...

Christopher Kelly’s A Cambodian Spring documents several years of protests in a small Phnom Penh community, whose inhabitants are facing eviction as part of the city's development plans. The film charts the...

This film was previously reviewed on 08/10/2017 as part of London Film Festival. Adapted by the author of the 166-page novella it is based on, Dominic Cooke’s On Chesil Beach offers the promise of...

This film was previously reviewed on 03/10/2017 as part of London Film Festival. Leon Vitali does not refer to himself as Stanley Kubrick’s personal assistant, but an unspecific, self-effacing...

Cargo may be a post-apocalyptic zombie thriller, but this is not an all-out horror flick. Basing it on their previous short film, directors Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke instead focus on humanity. While this...

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is the kind of audacious filmmaking experiment for which film festivals like Cannes were invented. It favours mood and an ingenuity of image over any instinct to deliver a...

The spirit of ’68 is alive and kicking in At War, the latest politically charged drama from the formidable pairing of director Stéphane Brizé and actor Vincent Lindon. We’re thrown straight into the...

This film was previously reviewed on 23/05/17 as part of Cannes Film Festival. Roaring down the trail blazed by the likes of Lena Dunham’s Girls, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag and Gillian...

“Ever get the feeling you fucked up somewhere a long time ago and you’re living a bad version of the life you were supposed to have?” Under the Silver Lake, from It Follows director David Robert...

Lars Von Trier is back with The House that Jack Built, a 150-minute grotesque epic going deep inside the mind of a serial killer. Does it confirm his genius and justify his provocations or is it the...

Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Film franchises prompt that question on a daily basis, with every semi-successful character or creation plundered for as many sequels and spin-offs as audiences...

You may expect a film about the current Pope to be of interest only to religious viewers, but veteran director Wim Wenders tries his hardest to generate a broader audience for his gentle documentary. This is a...

Hirokazu Kore-eda is on familiar ground with Shoplifters, the story of an unconventional family unit on the fringes of society who beg, steal and borrow to get by. It’s the most fun Kore-eda has been in...

In 2012, when Obama was president and racism in America seemed to be fading, Django Unchained featured a notorious scene with the Ku Klux Klan. Squabbling about eyeholes and spare bags, the white supremacist...