Frozen II – Review Phil W. Bayles November 26, 2019 Reviews Frozen II can’t quite recapture the lightning its predecessor managed to bottle, but it’s still an entertaining ride that goes to some interesting places.
The Goldfinch – Review Phil W. Bayles September 30, 2019 Reviews There’s a scene in The Goldfinch where Hobie, a dealer and restorer of antique furniture, teaches protagonist Theo how to distinguish between a true antique and a fake. Fake antiques, he says, are dead...
It Chapter Two – Review Phil W. Bayles September 3, 2019 Reviews How do you make a film that’s half an adaptation of one of the greatest horror novels ever written, and a sequel to the highest-grossing horror movie of all time? Andy Muschetti’s answer seems to be: by...
Pain and Glory – Review Tom Bond August 19, 2019 Reviews It’s easy to throw a film like Pain and Glory into all sorts of boxes – boxes marked ‘self-portrait’, ‘self-indulgent’ and ‘love letter to cinema’ – but that would be to cheapen a beguiling...
Midsommar – Review Katy Moon July 9, 2019 Reviews If anyone was worried that burgeoning horror auteur Ari Aster was going to mellow out after his disturbing debut, you can sleep easy. Aster’s latest (which shares more than a passing resemblance to...
Spider-Man: Far From Home – Review Tom Bond June 30, 2019 Reviews Spider-Man: Far From Home is the perfect film to follow the triumph and heartbreak of Avengers: Endgame, and deliver a fitting epilogue to Marvel’s Phase 3. It’s a teen film in every meaning of the word,...
Support the Girls – Review Tom Bond June 27, 2019 Reviews Mumblecore master Andrew Bujalski has always been preoccupied with the world of work and how it shapes people’s lives. His latest film, Support the Girls, puts an explicitly feminist slant on that topic,...
Child’s Play – Review Jack King June 21, 2019 Reviews "A white guy murdered in the middle of a watermelon patch. Poetic." This isn't a line from Jordan Peele's latest horror-infused racial satire Us, nor does it come from the atrocious reboot of Shaft. This is a...
Brightburn – Review Phil W. Bayles June 20, 2019 Reviews There’s a whole subgenre of superhero comics that came about from asking ‘what if?’ As in, what if Batman was a vampire? What if the Avengers had been around in Elizabethan England? Now David...
Danny – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2019 Review Jack King June 13, 2019 Reviews What is one spurred to do when facing their own mortality? Co-directors Aaron Zeghers & Lewis Bennett evoke this question throughout Danny: a flawed, if immensely personal, 50-minute documentary compiled...
Don’t Be a Dick About It – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2019 Review Jack King June 10, 2019 Reviews A documentary doesn't always have to be didactic in order to teach. As is true for real life, it's often through passive observation that we learn much not only about the subject at hand, but also of...
Gloria Bell – Review Jack King June 6, 2019 Reviews 2017's A Fantastic Woman, Chilean director Sebastián Lelio's fifth film, was celebrated as a critical darling for a multitude of well-earned reasons – not least being Lelio's rich characterisation of Marina...
High Life – Review Chris Edwards May 10, 2019 Reviews Travelling at 99% of the speed of light, Clare Denis’s latest feature High Life sees Robert Pattinson’s Monte attempt to raise a baby daughter in deep space. Focusing on three distinct periods in Monte’s...
Woman at War – Review Josefine Algieri May 4, 2019 Reviews Benedikt Erlingsson’s hero, the titular Woman at War, is, at first glance, an ordinary woman: Hella (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir) leads a perfectly mundane existence as a choir director, cycling cheerfully...
Bel Canto – Review Jack King May 1, 2019 Reviews Set amidst domestic tension within a non-descript country in Latin America, Bel Canto predominantly follows the perspective of Roxanne Coss (Julianne Moore), an American opera star performing at the private...