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Sami Blood – EIFF 2017 Review

Appearing on screen above its English translation, the Swedish title of Amanda Kernell’s debut feature Sameblod might provoke some interesting thoughts in the minds of its English-speaking audiences. A film...
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Kaleidoscope – EIFF 2017 Review

In this council estate-set psychological thriller, Toby Jones must confront his Oedipal complex after a date that goes badly wrong. During the title sequence, Carl looks through the kaleidoscope he was...
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Newton – EIFF 2017 Review

Jungle-set political satire from Amit V. Masurkar picks on the Indian electoral process as the butt of its 104-minute-long joke. Much like politics, Newton is a comedy in which two ridiculous male egos make...
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Paris Can Wait – EIFF 2017 Review

Paris Can Wait, the first foray into fiction from Eleanor Coppola (wife of Francis Ford), is at best a Woody Allen-esque Americans-do-Europe travelogue, and at worst a boring and indulgent piece of wealth...
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Godspeed – EIFF 2017 Review

Dangerously straddling multiple genres, Godspeed is a comedy crime caper and unlikely-friendship road movie that struggles to decidedly define itself as anything other than confused. With genre-bending beloved...
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The Book of Henry – Review

Gregg Hurwitz's screenplay for The Book of Henry has been searching for a director since the late 1990s. Watching the film, it’s not difficult to see why. Tonally, it’s all over the place. It starts as...
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Baby Driver – Review

From the first car chase – set to ‘Bellbottoms’ – Baby Driver makes its mission clear in a manner not unlike Damien Chazelle's crossover hit La La Land: this is another untraditional musical....
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Stockholm, My Love – Review

British cinephile par excellence, Mark Cousins, returns with another of his ambitious and high-minded cine-essays (although this is technically fictional) centred on a specific geographical location. The...
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Gifted – Review

Increasingly we’re seeing films that, rather than adding a Hollywood shine to everything, offer us a realistically messy portrayal of life. That’s exactly what’s on show here - and it’s fantastic....
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Whitney: Can I Be Me – Review

Whitney: Can I Be Me sees Nick Broomfield take on the iconic spectre of Asif Kapadia's Amy, and largely fail. His brief, of course, is to take on the iconic spectre of Whitney Houston, but again, we've seen...
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The Mummy – Review

Disjointed as a severed arm, The Mummy has a tangled knot of a plot. Its story is as confused as its grasp of mythology and geography, yet still it survives. The key to this life among certain death is,...