Reviews
Free-running is the gimmick powering this actioner scripted and produced by French action powerhouse Luc Besson and also known as District B13 (B is for “Banlieue”). Set in a broken-down Paris in the near future, District 13 has an Escape from New York kind of vibe and follows a tough cop (Cyril Raffaelli) and a … Read more
Once upon a time Claire Denis didn’t make genre movies. She made film you might designate broadly as dramas, or as French dramas, but most specifically as Claire Denis movies, films often with a strong emphasis on unspoken attraction (see Beau Travail, her masterpiece). But in recent years that has changed. In films like Bastards, … Read more
One of the “unholy trinity” of British folk-horror films of the era, 1971’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw sits between Witchfinder General (1968) and The Wicker Man (1973) – there are a growing number of fans but it’s not as well known, cultish or highly regarded as the other two. I’m guessing the scrappy narrative is … Read more
Films about pretty young people dying miserably of some terrible but usually not disfiguring condition can be a bit of a drag. Tuesday writer/director Daina Oniunas-Pusić has found a way of injecting a bit of zip – adding a bit of the weird supernatural. We’re told from all the publicity that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the … Read more
The dramatised behind-the-scenes story of the rise and demise of the company that had the world where its customers had its little black phone – in the palm of its hand – BlackBerry is so well designed, tooled and assembled that it could be used as a case study for how to make a film … Read more
Like an Inspector Clouseau party that’s forgotten to invite Peter Sellers, The Interview has a gigantic gaping hole where the comedy should be. Unsure if it’s a satire on modern entertainment or a Get Smart-style caper comedy set in the People’s Republic of North Korea, it squats uneasily between the two, leaving its game bromantic stars, … Read more
Though the Asgardian deity has appeared in other Avengers movies in the interim,Thor: Love and Thunder is the first outing for Chris Hemsworth’s caped godhead since the last standalone Thor movie, 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok. Time has moved on and we’re now in a different phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one determined to bolt a … Read more
Telling the story of the hyperhyped tennis match between 55-year-old “male chauvinist pig” Bobby Riggs and the then reigning queen of tennis, Billie Jean King, this deceptively light documentary catches the casual and systemic sexism of the time, paints a warm, human picture of King and even has the grace to give the publicity hungry … Read more
Fifty years before a referendum determined that the UK wanted to leave the EU, the subject was tackled in this Avengers episode called A Sense of History. But Martin Woodhouse’s screenplay doesn’t call on Winston Churchill or the Second World War to help invoke British exceptionalism. He goes further back… to Robin Hood and Merry … Read more
If Saltburn left you craving more class envy and death in a grand country house then pile your plate high with The Lesson. You also get another helping of Richard E Grant at his most brutally awful. At his best, in other words. Like Saltburn it’s the story of an outsider invited to spend some … Read more
A #MeToo-fuelled drama produced by Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap company, starring Carey Mulligan and directed and written by Killing Eve’s Emerald Fennell. Promising Young Woman is full of promising young women but recently gained extra notoriety because a Variety review of the film apparently suggested that Carey Mulligan wasn’t quite hot enough to pull off the … Read more
Clive Dunn, Paul Eddington, Yootha Joyce and Penelope Keith – four of the biggest names in 1970s British TV comedy – were relative unknowns when Something Nasty in the Nursery aired in April 1967. But their presence is further proof, if any were needed, that The Avengers had slewed well towards the lighter end of the … Read more