Film Reviews

★★★★☆ 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...

★★★★☆ Gaspar Noé surprised us all, when the Cannes Film Festival announced the world premiere of a new work from the controversial auteur of Irreversible (2002), Enter the Void (2009) and last year’s acclaimed horror movie, Climax. A medium-length film clocking in at 50 minutes, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beatrice Dalle, Lux Aeterna is classic Noé in its confrontational aesthetic prowess and equally a marked departure. Was Climax more than a just a movie title? Was it the end of...

★★☆☆☆ Albert Serra’s Liberté (2019) is set in the years leading up to the French Revolution. Banished from the court of King Louis XVI, a band of errant aristocrats flee to Germany, hoping they will find there a haven to safely practice their libertine philosophies. Across the border, the group makes the acquaintance of Duc de Walchen, who they believe might appreciate their outré tastes and understand the rebellious inclinations which drives them to outsider status among their social set....

★★☆☆☆ What makes Shaun of the Dead such an accomplished film is its combination of parody, comedy, and some genuinely well drawn characters. The Dead Don’t Die falls flat on all three fronts. This zombie comedy by Jim Jarmusch opened the Cannes Film Festival, but likely for its all star cast including Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton and Selena Gomez to walk the red carpet. Focused on small town Centreville, USA, polar fracking has caused the earth to jolt...

★☆☆☆☆ Pokemon is a genuine cultural phenomenon. It’s a franchise over 20 years old spanning across card and console games, TV shows, animated movies and other merchandise, grossing north of $90bn. I have never played or watched any of it before. I am certain that for fans who have followed the games, who devoured the TV show and the many movies, that Detective Pikachu - the franchise’s first official move into live action - connects with the things they have...