The 77th Cannes Film Festival concluded with a shift to the new generation. Notable awards went to Sean Baker's Anora and Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
★★★★☆ With Luca Guadagnino's terrific Challengers, the acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name brings us the sub-genre we never knew we needed: the erotic tennis thriller.
★★☆☆☆ Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett's "Abigail" mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless…
★★★★☆ In Alex Garland's Civil War, a group of journalists embark on a road trip to interview the US President amidst a second American Civil War, while exploring media's dehumanizing relationship with violence.
Las Vegas is a glitzy, glamorous destination, and has been for more than seventy years. While many tourists visit the Nevadan city thanks to its outstanding casinos and entertainment shows, movie buffs will find that it provides much in…
★★★★☆ Having won the Jury Prize in 2013 for Like Father, Like Son and the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, Cannes favourite and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with Monster, a masterful work of intricate storytelling,…
★★★★★ Theodor Adorno famously wrote that poetry was not possible after Auschwitz, but is cinema? Billy Wilder certainly thought so, getting footage from the camps as evidence as much as anything else. Steven Spielberg, Claude Lanzmann,…
The winners of this year’s 96th Academy Awards were announced earlier this morning at LA’s Dolby Theatre. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer was the big winner on the night, scooping seven Oscars in total including Best Picture, Best Director…
The Barbenheimer phenomenon reaches its natural denouement tonight at the 96th Academy Awards ceremony, with Christopher Nolan's colossal Oppenheimer expected to sweep most of the major accolades. Barbie will likely have to make do with a…
With the UK’s most prestigious film awards returning this weekend (Sunday 18 February), it’s time to enter into a round of foolproof predictions on who will win at the 77th Baftas. The Baftas are traditionally seen as an indicator of Oscar…
The cinematic universe is filled with successful productions based on equally successful books. The Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, Dune, Harry Potter, IT, Gone Girl, and The Shining are just a few examples of literary works that…
Christopher Nolan's monumental biopic Oppenheimer led the pack with 13 nods, while Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things and Martin Scorsese received 11 and nine nominations respectively. Greta Gerwig's 2023 blockbuster Barbie received eight…
★★★★★ Greek weird wave director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite) hits his stride with his strangest yet most deeply satisfying comedy fable yet, Poor Things. This exhilarating mix of Fanny Hill and Frankenstein is adapted by…
★★★★☆ Following Baz Luhrmann’s deliriously over-the-top 2022 film Elvis comes Sofia Coppola’s decidedly more understated Priscilla. In fact, it’s the polar opposite of Elvis both aesthetically and emotionally. If Luhrmann captures the…
What does it mean to love cinema? For the better part of a decade this writer has written for this website, first as a DVD reviewer, later as editor, and now as chief critic. As with all things, hobbies and passions wax and wane, but…
★★★☆☆ American filmmaker Michael Mann returns to the big screen for Ferrari, a long-held passion project for the legendary director. As one would expect from the director of Heat and Miami Vice, this biopic is a well-mounted and handsomely…
★★★★★ Godzilla Minus One successfully blends horror-infused kaiju spectacle with an emotionally compelling storyline about grief, wartime trauma, and hope. The film's world-class visuals, engaging characters, and socially relevant themes…
"Trenque Lauquen" is an enigmatic film by Argentinian director Laura Citarella. It follows Rafa and Chicho's search for the missing biologist, Laura, unraveling secrets along the way. Embedded within the narrative are flashbacks revealing…
★★★★☆ Bradley Cooper is back in the director's chair for another musically-oriented film, a biopic of the composer Leonard Bernstein entitled Maestro. And yet, this isn’t really a conventional biopic at all. Rather, it’s the portrait of a…
★★★☆☆ Celebrated British director Joanna Hogg is back on the Venice Lido with The Eternal Daughter, a film shot in secret in lockdown and starring The Souvenir's Tilda Swinton in dual roles as a mother and daughter heading to a hotel in…
★★★☆☆ American director Todd Haynes (Safe, Carol) returns to UK cinemas with May December, a Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore two-hander that asks the question: what if Brian De Palma remade Persona but as a comedy?
★★★★☆ When asked why he called his novel How to Be Good, novelist Nick Hornby replied because having “how” in the title boosts sales significantly. We’re all looking for guidebooks, even when we read novels or see films. The world is a…
★★★☆☆ The perennial theme of the hitman is so of the zeitgeist at the moment that just in this year's Venice edition there are three films with the figure of the assassin as protagonist. Harmony Korine’s Aggro Dr1ft, Richard Linklater’s…
Guy Ritchie’s 2019 offering The Gentlemen was a return to form for the British director. He went back to his gangster roots and delivered a fresh and innovative crime tale set in London. Thanks to the popularity of that picture, a spinoff…
★★★☆☆ We are now deep into the elder statesman stage of Martin Scorsese’s career. Every film comes with a certain weight of expectation, even as it tries to reach the escape velocity from his previous work. The Killers of the Flower Moon,…
The 31st Filmfest Hamburg, held from 28 September to 7 October, features a global lineup with highlights from different regions, including a subset of Ukrainian films due to the ongoing war. Titles include Timm Kröger’s The Theory of…
★★★★☆ Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's first film in six years, R.M.N. is a multi-faceted, oft-bleak, and occasionally surreal portrait of racism and toxic masculinity in Romanian society. In its depiction of a part of Europe struggling…
★★★★☆ An acerbic social satire, Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva's latest reflects a cultural malaise rooted in cultural ennui. More than a casual swipe at modern social trends, Rotting in the Sun exposes a kind of cruelty, alienation,…
★★★☆☆ Chilean director Pablo Larraín has made the treatment of the great, the famous and the powerful his topic of preference, eschewing the lower end of the social scale that first made him famous with films such as Tony Manero and Post…
Outlaw Johnny Black is one of the most intriguing new movies of 2023, with a Western setting that introduces elements like comedy, adventure, and martial arts to hopefully provide something new and fresh. Will it be a success and is there…