Film Reviews

KinDir: Josh and Jonathan BakerI talk about the way films are marketed, or rather mis-marketed, a lot. Outside the cinemas, UK distribution is awash with films you might never notice have been released. Some you might have heard of, except they got released with new titles. Others, like Kin, have DVD art that makes them look like something completely different. At its heart, Kin is about brothers. 14 year old Eli (Myles Truitt) is adopted, and his older ex-con adoptive...

Stan Laurel and Ollie Hardy had been performing together for almost 30 years when they arrived in the UK in 1954 for a theatre tour. Their glory days were clearly behind them but they put on a string of admirable performances despite their advanced years and failing health. They may no longer have been at the cutting edge of comedy but there was an undeniable spark that remained between them. Stan & Ollie follows them on this bittersweet tour as they try...

A long cherished project for director Wash Westmoreland and his late husband and writing partner Richard Glatzer, Colette has been over fifteen years in the planning. It’s a bit disappointing, then, to find that it’s a fairly straightforward telling of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette’s (Keira Knightley) life during her marriage to Henry Gauthier-Villars, known both professionally and socially as Willy (Dominic West). During this time she wrote a series of Claudine novels, based on her own life but which, like the work...

ShirkersDir: Sandi TanMany films are lost, but I’m not sure I’ve ever previously heard of a film being stolen. Shirkers is a film about a film, one made in 1989 by a group of film students, written by 18 year old Sandi Tan and directed by Georges Cardona, who taught her and her friends to be filmmakers, Shirkers was one of a tiny handful of independent films made in Singapore, which at the time had no film industry to speak...

I had the toys when I was growing up, but oddly I don’t have any specific memory of the Transformers TV show, the same goes for the animated film that so many fans hold close to their hearts. That being the case, when I saw Michael Bay’s first live action entry in the film series that Bumblebee forms a prequel to, I wasn’t angry, just bored. I got angry come the second and third films, not only because they were...

For some years now, I have been a frustrated fan of the British actress Andrea Riseborough. She’s clearly a huge talent, but one who always seemed to turn up and be the best thing in movies that were anything from disaster (Madonna’s misbegotten W/E, in which she shone against all odds) to disappointment (Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy, which underused her, meaning that the film’s revenge narrative never connected with me). Finally, Riseborough has a film that can match her. Nancy is...

Adapted from The New Yorker article of the same name, The Old Man & the Gun tells the mostly true story of a serial bank robber who even in his 70s couldn’t resist the thrill of his next heist. Following a miraculous escape from San Quentin prison, Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford) begins a string of robberies that confuse the authorities and begin to catch the attention of the public. Young detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck) is left perplexed and quickly becomes obsessed with the...

So there is a bad Coen Brothers film. Dispiritingly, this was my first thought once the credits rolled for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Even worse, I started to think it about 30 minutes in. As someone who has spent the last decade insisting The Big Lewbowski and No Country for Old Men are more than just overly-violent nonsense, I had to concede that the latest offering from Joel and Ethan is, sadly, just that.  The film's plot (and it's generous to claim it has one) rests...

Disclaimer: I had watched seven John Carpenter films in a row immediately prior to sitting down to this. I do not think this affected my judgement, but I don't know for sure. Wreck-It-Ralph is a hugely fun movie. A heartfelt nod to the arcade games of yonder, a protagonist echoing without plagiarising Toy Story, and some sentimental and hilarious moments to show that Disney Animation Studios could still compete with Pixar. Which is all what made Ralph Breaks The Internet so disappointing to me....