Colette – LFF 2018 Review
If you’re not a fan of historical costume dramas, this won’t be the film to convert you – but don’t dismiss it just yet: Colette has the fascinating eponymous French novelist as its subject, a woman...
Miriam Lies – LFF 2018 Review
After a chaste online romance in which no photos have been exchanged, biracial Miriam (Rodríguez) is shocked to discover that Jean-Louis (Suarez) – the boy she has been planning on inviting to her...
The Boy Downstairs – Review
The Boy Downstairs, although it may most comfortably sit within the rom-com genre, avoids the common tropes and clichés of many of the poorer (and multitudinous) romantic comedies. Diana (a quirky Zosia...
The Breadwinner – Review
This film was previously reviewed on 15/10/2017 as part of London Film Festival. Although ostensibly a children’s animation, just as its source material was a children’s novel, The Breadwinner confronts...
Sweet Country – Review
This film was originally reviewed on 10/10/2017 as part of London Film Festival. In the first seconds of Warwick Thornton’s outback Western Sweet Country a screaming brawl happens off screen, the camera...
Dark River – Review
This film was previously reviewed on 09/10/17 as part of London Film Festival. Premiering at Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and winning British Film of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards,...
Makala – Review
This film was previously reviewed on 21/09/17 as part of London Film Festival. In Swahili, "makala" means "charcoal". Emmanuel Gras’s observational documentary follows Kabwita Kasongo as he journeys 50...
Strangled – Review
Wholly unrelenting and uncensored, Hungarian writer-director Arpad Sopsits’ Strangled (A Martfüi Rém, in its native translation) is a true crime neo-noir that rarely lets up. Strangled effectively...
The Boy Downstairs – LFF 2017 Review
The Boy Downstairs, although it may most comfortably sit within the rom-com genre, avoids the common tropes and clichés of many of the poorer (and multitudinous) romantic comedies. Diana (a quirky Zosia...
Journeyman – LFF 2017 Review
Journeyman is a film waiting ringside to deliver a heavy, gut-wrenching blow; it’s not a sucker punch – you know it’s coming from the film’s traditional structure and triumphant opening act – but...
Small Town Crime – LFF 2017 Review
Why isn't John Hawkes in more films? He is mesmerising here as hopeless, selfish, drunk ex-copper Mike Kendall, whose life fell apart 17 months ago – and who still hasn't managed to piece it back together...
AlphaGo – LFF 2017 Review
AlphaGo is an ostensibly dry and rather niche documentary on DeepMind’s efforts – from an idea 20 years in the making – to teach its AI to master the ancient Chinese board game Go. This game is...
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women – LFF 2017 Review
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women ensures you’ll never look at Wonder Woman the same way again. Not only was she ahead of her time at her creation as a feminist icon in 1941, but the overtly sexualised...
6 Days – LFF 2017 Review
It’s surprising that it took so long for 6 Days’ subject matter to receive the onscreen treatment, as it depicts the famous 1980 Iranian Embassy siege and the SAS’s response, seen as “an almost...
Funny Cow – LFF 2017 Review
Funny Cow is literally Maxine Peake’s show, as she narrates her tough life – and the film – from a later point of success through a televised monologue. Her no-nonsense honesty is reminiscent of a...