Tag: film

The cinema of Guillermo del Toro is notoriously dark and troubling and, although his latest film is notionally set in the US of the 1960s, it is a typically fantastical alternative version of those troubled… read more

If there was any doubt where director Sebastián Lelio’s was going with the Oscar Award-winning A Fantastic Woman, there’s a big clue in the film’s ironic title.  While some might find transgender Marina Vidal, played… read more

Although loosely based on John Pearson’s book, Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J Paul Getty, the antecedence of Ridley Scott’s film has been largely overshadowed by the reshooting of… read more

Churchill has been so lionised in reason times, that it’s both a surprise and a shock to be reminded how tenuous his authority was at the outset of the Second World War, and how capricious… read more

Breaking Away When movies seem split between brainless big budget blockbusters and narrow gauge art house fodder, it’s tempting to harken back to a golden age of intelligent, offbeat, cinema intended for a mainstream audience.… read more

The idea of a dope-smoking, leather-jacketed lawyer and an aspiring DJ, opening up their home to a strait-laced, studious, ultra-conservative Muslim sounds like the setup for a credulity stretching social drama, but in the hands… read more

Murder on the Orient Express Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel is a big budget, gloriously cinematic, giddy rollercoaster ride of a movie. A nostalgic indulgence that is not just for a… read more

Loveless Filmed in the perpetual gloom of a snowy Russian autumn, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s latest movie paints a sombre, melancholy picture of a self-centred and supremely unsympathetic couple in the midst of an acrimonious breakup, oblivious… read more

It’s a truism that the characters in thrillers frequently act irrationally, leaving their frustrated audience mute with impotent rage. All we want them to do is get out, yet they rarely follow this advice. Jordan… read more

Call Me By Your Name Set during a hot and seemingly endless summer, this beautifully photographed film is a love letter to Northern Italy, telling the minutely observed story of Elio, a grumpy teenager played… read more