Wind River – Review Tom Bond September 9, 2017 Reviews Taylor Sheridan has made his name as the writer of gritty, sincere action films like Sicario and Hell or High Water, and it’s fair to say he doesn’t change a winning formula with his directorial debut,...
Jim & Andy – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 5, 2017 Reviews As hinted by its nicely simple title, Jim & Andy is a documentary exploring the brilliant but difficult comedy minds of Jim Carrey and the late Andy Kaufman, centring on how those minds became one on the...
The Third Murder – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 5, 2017 Reviews A rare foray into more genre-style filmmaking for master of small family dramas Hirokazu Koreeda, The Third Murder is a slow-burning, twisty mystery that is ultimately too convoluted to really satisfy as a...
Una Famiglia – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 4, 2017 Reviews Deliberately opaque for its first 20 minutes, it’s hard to see exactly what film Sebastiano Riso’s Una Famiglia actually is for a good while after it starts. Come the end, you’ll wish it never revealed...
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 4, 2017 Reviews A sensationally funny and affecting dark comedy, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri arrived at Venice just as the festival was hitting a slump, and has reinvigorated it with a fiery passion. Martin...
Woodshock – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 4, 2017 Reviews The highlight of any season of the FX anthology American Horror Story is always the creepy and evocative opening titles based on whatever that year’s theme is. At 90 seconds long, they’re perfect snapshots...
The Leisure Seeker – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 3, 2017 Reviews Paolo Virzi’s The Leisure Seeker wastes no time getting started. No sooner are we introduced to its world than we are listening to a phone call of a son screaming at his sister that their sickly old parents...
The House by the Sea – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 3, 2017 Reviews Self-indulgent, glacially slow, and painfully boring, Robert Guédiguian’s The House by the Sea is atrocious. It’s baffling that it made it through the screening process to play in Competition at Venice,...
Suburbicon – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 3, 2017 Reviews With mystery films, it’s often said that trailers should be avoided, and that going in blind is the best way to watch them. Suburbicon is an exception to this rule, as the final product bears very little...
Una – Review Rachel Brook September 3, 2017 Reviews The best aspect of Una is its scrambled chronology. Flashbacks break up what could otherwise be a rather repetitive two-hander, albeit one made up of fine performances from both Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn....
Foxtrot – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 3, 2017 Reviews In 2009, Israeli writer-director and former tank gunner Samuel Maoz blew away the competition at the Venice Film Festival with his searing, Golden Lion-winning debut, Lebanon. Eight years on, Maoz returns to...
The Limehouse Golem – Review Louise Burrell September 3, 2017 Reviews The Victorian era has provided fertile ground for cinema’s lust for murder, mystery, and debauchery, particularly around the unsolved Jack the Ripper murders. What The Limehouse Golem offers is a precursor...
La Mélodie – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 3, 2017 Reviews Generally the first exposure to foreign film for a British child is in a French lesson towards the end of term. Over the last decade or so, 2004’s The Chorus and the 2008 Palme d’Or winner The...
Moon Dogs – Review Louise Burrell September 2, 2017 Reviews Following the well-trodden path of road trip films, Moon Dogs tells the tale of two very different step brothers who make the journey from Shetland to Glasgow, one in search of love and the other in search of...
Brawl in Cell Block 99 – Venice 2017 Review Jack Blackwell September 2, 2017 Reviews S. Craig Zahler’s follow up to the hallucinatory Bone Tomahawk was always going to be something unique, but very little can prepare you for Brawl in Cell Block 99. By a wide margin the strangest thing at...