The Real Charlie Chaplin – Review Louise Burrell February 9, 2022 Reviews Directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney take on the unenviable task of trying to dissect the life of a man who was once one of the most famous people on the planet. While Chaplin carved out his own style...
Official Competition – Venice 2021 Review Tom Bond September 10, 2021 Reviews Official Competition brings a mischievous premise worth the admission fee alone: acclaimed director Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz) is hired to make a prestigious adaptation with two of Spain’s finest actors,...
People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan – Review Louise Burrell August 24, 2021 Reviews TV-to-film comedies don’t have the most inspiring of track records. Where writers can pack a 30-minute episode with laughs, they often find themselves stretched very thin across 90 minutes. One of the...
Riders of Justice – Review Rafaela Sales Ross July 22, 2021 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in February 2021 as part of our Glasgow Film Festival coverage. Coincidences are thoroughly dissected in Riders of Justice, a thriller that puts to the test all the...
Deerskin – Review Louise Burrell July 15, 2021 Reviews Tearing through its meagre 77-minute runtime, Deerskin wastes no time on plot set-up. It becomes quickly apparent that the storyline simply consists of: man buys deerskin jacket, man believes deerskin jacket...
Fried Barry – Review Alysha Prasad May 8, 2021 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in August 2020 as part of our Fantasia Festival coverage. Barry (Gary Green), an abusive drug-addict, is on yet another bender after an argument with his wife. After...
Paul Dood’s Deadly Lunch Break – SXSW 2021 Review Rafaela Sales Ross March 24, 2021 Reviews Last year, Stranger Things’ Joe Keery delivered a career-defining performance as social media-obsessed psychopath Kurt Kunkle in Netflix’s Spree. The young man, whose meagre online presence stood in the...
Ninja Baby – Berlinale 2021 Review Rafaela Sales Ross March 6, 2021 Reviews Rakel (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and Ingrid (Tora Christine Dietrichson) are at a locker room getting ready for an aikido class, one of the many spontaneous activities the roommates take part in together when the...
Together Together – Sundance Film Festival 2021 Rafaela Sales Ross February 1, 2021 Reviews An app developer in his 40s, Matt (Ed Helms) decides to no longer wait for a partner to become a father. Opting for surrogacy, he enlists 26-year-old Anna (Patti Harrison), and, together, they try to navigate...
Baby Done – Review Rafaela Sales Ross January 22, 2021 Reviews Easily standing on top of a tall tree, playfully swinging a chainsaw in one hand, Zoe (Rose Matafeo) looks effortlessly cool - and clearly fearless. As she banters with two male colleagues, whose expressions...
Wrong Lever: How The Emperor’s New Groove Was Almost The Next Lion King George Howarth December 13, 2020 Behind The Curtain, Features, Stories from the Set In 1994, Disney seemed like it could do no wrong. The release of The Little Mermaid in '89 had kick-started the "Disney Renaissance" and the studio was riding high on the success of a string of musical films...
A Love Letter to… The Great Dictator Jess Goodman November 18, 2020 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia “I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.” For Charlie Chaplin, making people laugh was part of who he was. Having made his...
Love Letter: Buster Keaton’s One Week, 100 Years On Jess Goodman September 1, 2020 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia “Who would not wish to live a hundred years in a world where there are so many people who remember with gratitude and affection a little man with a frozen face who made them laugh a bit long years ago when...
Work It – Review George Howarth August 8, 2020 Reviews Netflix teen movies follow the same recipe: take a peppy teen star protagonist, comic relief, a love interest, break-up and make-up plot points, mix them together, pour into a high school, bake for 90 minutes...
The Kissing Booth 2 – Review Joseph Bullock July 25, 2020 Reviews Following on from a film populated by weird, inconsistent montages and a manipulative, creepy male lead, audiences were probably not expecting a masterpiece from this second instalment of The Kissing Booth....