The Eyes of Tammy Faye – Review Daniel Theophanous January 31, 2022 Reviews Fervent piousness and vulgar materialism have never been interwoven so tightly as they did in the lives of the once biggest names in TV Christian evangelism, Tammy Faye Bakker (Jessica Chastain) and husband...
Spencer – Review Tom Bond November 4, 2021 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in September 2021 as part of our Venice Film Festival coverage. Pablo Larraín’s Princess Diana biopic, Spencer, gets about as far away from a cradle-to-grave template as...
Stardust – Review George Howarth January 14, 2021 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in November 2020 as part of our Raindance 2020 coverage. Feathers were unquestionably ruffled when it was announced last year by Duncan Jones that the upcoming biopic of...
Radioactive – Review Phil W. Bayles March 18, 2020 Reviews Radioactive should have been a slam dunk. The life of Marie Curie is ripe for cinematic adaptation, and this one is directed by Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian filmmaker behind the autobiographical...
ORWAV’s Top 20 Films of 2019: #9 – Can You Ever Forgive Me? Carmen Paddock December 29, 2019 Analysis, Features, Top 10 At the end of the decade, media seems to be moving further away from the noughties’ nihilism. Perhaps audiences need a break from the relentless inhumanity highlighted in 24/7 news cycles. Perhaps a...
Tolkien – Review Sophie Maxwell May 4, 2019 Reviews Dome Karukoski’s biopic of J.R.R. Tolkien brings to life the origins of the author’s career, charting the course of a life taken over by imaginary worlds. Shivering in the trenches, a young Tolkien...
Marighella – Berlinale 2019 Review Rhys Handley February 23, 2019 Reviews Democracy only returned to Brazil in 1989, but the threat of another backslide into authoritarianism is dangerously imminent today. Far-right agitator Jair Bolsonaro was elected president in January 2019 and...
On the Basis of Sex – Review Phil W. Bayles February 23, 2019 Reviews This review was originally published on 6/2/2019. In the age of Donald Trump, it's unsurprising that Ruth Bader Ginsburg – only the second woman in history to ascend to the US Supreme Court – has...
Mr Jones – Berlinale 2019 Review Carmen Paddock February 11, 2019 Reviews Agnieszka Holland’s account of the man who exposed Stalin’s Ukrainian famine is a straightforward account whose tone occasionally jars with genre touches – these dynamic choices would work better if...
On the Basis of Sex – Review Phil W. Bayles February 6, 2019 Reviews In the age of Donald Trump, it's unsurprising that Ruth Bader Ginsburg – only the second woman in history to ascend to the US Supreme Court – has become something of a superhero. And like many superhero...
Breaking the Biopic Formula Carmen Paddock February 6, 2019 Analysis, Features, Opinion This week sees the UK release of On the Basis of Sex, a biopic covering the education and early court cases of esteemed US Supreme Court Justice and living legend Ruth Bader Ginsberg. It joins a long line of...
Bohemian Rhapsody – Review Louise Burrell October 26, 2018 Reviews Infamously plagued with problems throughout its production, including replacing not only its lead actor but also its director, Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody offers up very little substance but still...
Blaze – LFF 2018 review Rhys Handley October 19, 2018 Reviews Shot dead at the age of 39 in a mundane dispute over a friend’s pension slip, Blaze Foley has been folded into country music legend – spoken of in whispers, his influences keenly felt but never explicitly...
Michel Hazanavicius on Redoubtable Louise Burrell May 8, 2018 Behind The Curtain, Features, Interview Based on French actress Anne Wiazemsky's autobiography, Redoubtable is an intimate biopic of a very specific period in Jean-Luc Godard's life. Following his overwhelming success as the leader of French New...
The Mercy – Review Louise Burrell February 9, 2018 Reviews Director James Marsh follows up 2014’s The Theory of Everything with The Mercy, another distinctly British drama. Starring Rachel Weisz and Colin Firth, this is, at first glance, an extraordinarily twee...