Reviews
Imaginative, sweet and brilliantly observed, Robot Dreams is a deceptively simple animation set in an alternate New York of the 1980s, where animals rather than people crowd the city streets, delis and subways, and a lonely dog living on his own decides, on a whim, to buy one of those flatpack robots he’s seen advertised … Read more
Nocturne is a story about two sisters. Twins. Both students at an arts academy. Vivian (Madison Iseman) is off to prestigious Juilliard soon; Juliet (Sydney Sweeney) isn’t. Vivian has a hot boyfriend; Juliet doesn’t. Vivian plays tricksy pieces by the likes of Saint Saëns; Juliet sticks with safe dependable Mozart. Vivian is feisty and popular; … Read more
Horizons aslant, perspectives askew, Hinterland borrows freely from German Expressionist cinema to put a new (old) spin on familiar material. “The war is lost,” intones a sombre voice in German as the lights come up. We’re in Austria after the First World War where a soldier just back from an extended stretch in a Soviet … Read more
When it came out in 1934, everyone knew that The Scarlet Empress was a reference to a scarlet woman, a sexual libertine. Doubly so once they learned that it was a biopic about Catherine the Great, the Russian royal who notoriously died while making love to a horse, or so the story went. Things are … Read more
“That penis is getting dusty” – a line of dialogue in wonky auteur Guy Maddin’s latest film, another arthouse exploration of arthouse themes delivered in high contrast monochrome, from a camera on a bungee and via an editor with attention deficit disorder. There are a couple of famous names too, just to lure in the … Read more
Films that watch poor people having a bad time aren’t everyone’s idea of fun and while A Thousand and One walks a familiar path, it does so with a keen knowledge that misery is a turn-off, and even throws in some firecracker performances to help sweeten the pill. Chief among those is Teyana Taylor, in … Read more
There are big Steven Soderbergh movies and small Steven Soderbergh movies. Presence is the latest of the small ones, stacking up alongside Let Them All Talk and Unsane as another fascinating experiment in Soderbergian minimalism. Between starry, big-budget affairs like Oceans 11 or Contagion, in his smaller movies this master of technique sets himself film-making … Read more
Well I was expecting a French film called Two of Us (aka Deux), about two ageing lesbians who have spent decades in the closet. Instead I got this Two of Us (aka Dead Earth aka Paradise Z) about two young lesbians fighting off a zombie holocaust. Not quite the same thing, the lesbian aspect to … Read more
She can’t. Run, that is, one of the little jokes that director/co-writer Aneesh Chaganty has with the audience in this two-hander about a mother, her wheelchair-using daughter and the young woman’s impending flight from the family home to university. Another joke is what a great mother Diane (Sarah Paulson) is. She’s home-schooled her daughter Chloe … Read more
In 1947’s swift noirish crime drama Crossfire a bunch of Army guys in the process of being demobbed meet a guy in a bar. By the end of the evening the guy is dead. But who did it and why? Director Edward Dmytryk opens with the death happening in shadowplay against a wall, as the … Read more
Phyllida Lloyd is most often described as the director of Mama Mia! but there’s a lot more to her than that. Take Herself, the latest in a line of strongly female-centred productions, including the Mrs Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady and the all-female Shakespeare productions of Julius Caesar, Henry IV and The Tempest at the … Read more
A CGI animation featuring penguins which comes along in the wake of March of the Penguins, so it’s probably pushing at an open door. And unlike a lot of animated films about animals, this one sets its stall out really quickly. Emperor penguins, it seems, all have a special song that they use in courtship. … Read more
