Film Reviews

★★★★★ When news was announced of an iconic animation and personal childhood favourite being re-done  as a live-action film, there was scepticism over what value it could have and Disney's motivations. With Aladdin, these fears may be forgotten for what is an amazing piece of cinema.                The 1992 Aladdin has been a childhood staple for those born in the 80s and 90s. From its colourful  and dreamy city of Agrabah, it’s catching tunes such as  “Friend like me”,” Prince Ali” and the  Academy Award...

★★★★☆ With the festival over for another year, and the winner of the Palme D'or Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, I'm bringing some focus to a film I feel was one of the many hidden gems to be found at this year's festival (with quick shoutouts to My Brother's Love and the excellent Papicha). While the aforementioned films played in the Un Certain Regard competition, delightfully weird black comedy Deerskin (Le daim) came from the Director's fortnight and had an audience in...

★★★★☆ Taiwanese director Midi Z’s Nina Wu tackles the theme of predatory male behaviour and exploitation of female bodies in the film industry. The screenplay, co-written with lead actress Ke-Xi Wu, does not pull any punches. Going soft on the audience would hinder the uncompromising message at the heart of the story. Make no mistake, this is a difficult watch. Yet disturbing art can educate and inform, as much as shock our sensibilities. Midi Z and Ke-Xi Wu, though, are...

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Xavier Dolan is known as a child of Cannes. He is feted at the world’s leading film festival like few directors have ever known. 2014’s Mommy earned him the Jury Prize (which he shared with Jean-Luc Godard) and It’s Only the End of the World picked up 2016’s Grand Prix, from George Miller’s controversial jury, despite it being savaged by critics on the Croisette. His follow-up, The Life and Death of John F. Donovan, which...

★★★★☆ Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) is long-term unemployed and festering at home. He makes a bit of money folding pizza boxes for a local restaurant, helped by his two teenaged kids and wife, but their living conditions are dire and the future looks decidedly bleak. Rough and uncouth this family might be, but when Ki-taek’s son, Ki-woo (Woo Shik Choi) lands a well-paid gig, fraudulently posing as a qualified English tutor to a high school girl from a posh family, things...

★★★★★ Two young women – sisters – are walking in a woodland. One loses track of the other. She calls out, hoping to find her. Karim Aïnouz’s Brazilian melodrama begins with a mood of ill-ease beautifully complemented by high-contrast, soft focus, 16mm cinematography, lending the opening scene a dreamlike sense of portent or bad omen. If your Spidey senses are tingling, in this regard, they’re accurate enough. Set in 1950s Rio de Janeiro, Euridice (Carol Duarte) and Guida (Julia Stockler)...

★★★★☆ Kantemir Balagov returns to Festival de Cannes’ Un Certain Regard programme for a second time with Beanpole (2019), a haunting post-WW2 drama where two former soldiers who served on the front in a female combat unit are reunited. The young cineaste portrays, with deft skill, themes of submission and domination, repressed desires and manipulative tendencies underpinning acts of friendship. It’s 1946 and Mother Russia is getting back on her feet, after years fighting the Nazis. At a hospital in...

★★★★☆ The John Wick series is one of simple pleasures. From relatively humble beginnings as a sleeper hit on a sub $30m budget, the series has grown in both scope and success, while still largely recognising where its core strengths lie. Chapter 3 picks up with Keanu Reeves’ John Wick immediately after the ending of Chapter 2, finding him excommunicated and unable to turn to the usual sources of help to escape the $14m (and growing) contract on his head....

★★★★★ It all seems so simple; tired of horrible bosses and demeaning employment, Ricky (Kris Hitchen) decides to become a delivery driver under the oversight of ‘patron saint of nasty bastards’ Maloney (Ross Brewster). Quickly ensnared in a workaholic system of abuse and exploitation, Ricky and his wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood), who works as a carer, struggle to find time for their children Seb (Rhys Stone) and Lisa Jane (Katie Proctor). Whereas Ken Loach’s previous work I, Daniel Blake took...