Film Reviews

A decade after winning the Palme d’Or for his film The Class, director Laurent Cantet brings us apolitically engaged look at France’s disenfranchised youth. Set in the coastal town of La Ciotat – the place where the Lumière brothers filmed a moving train and invented cinema – The Workshop centres around a summer writing class. It is led by novelist Olivia (Marina Foïs) who organises discussionsamong the young adults who attend the group. The aim is for the attendees to write a crime novel and Olivia helps them explore...

It’s important for a critic to understand and to state their bias, so I should say upfront that I love the original 1977 version of Suspiria. Dario Argento’s hallucinatory masterpiece is one of the most beautiful horror films ever made, and to my mind one of the greatest. This only became clearer with last year’s stunning 4K restoration and Blu Ray release, which made the extraordinary colours leap off the screen like never before. Given my love for the film,...

The Hate U GiveFilm is a reactive medium, but because it is expensive and time consuming to make it’s also often a slow one. The Black Lives Matter movement began in 2013 but this year we seem to have seen a glut of films that feel like they are responding to that movement and the reasons it exists. The Hate U Give, based on Angie Thomas’ 2017 novel is perhaps the most direct of these films, as it spotlights how...

I’m not fond of the tendency to label any interesting new anime director as ‘the next Miyazaki’. Partly this is because I’m a far bigger fan of the Studio Ghibli films by other directors but it also just strikes me as an easy crutch, and to apply it to filmmakers who are as individual in their vision and as different from each other and Miyazaki as Makoto Shinkai (Garden of Words, Your Name) and Mirai director Mamoru Hosoda doesn’t feel...

Welcomes to a new series on TLE Film. Here, each week, our film writers will have free rein to spotlight a few of the films they've seen recently in capsule reviews. The films could be from this week, they could be from the silent era. Hopefully our week in movies can provide a varied selection of ideas for your future weeks in movies. Candyman Candyman is about many things and gory killings are mostly the vehicle for them rather than...

The Peterloo Massacre may be a strangely overlooked event within British history, but there is something undeniably timely about the episode and Mike Leigh’s adaptation of it. Peterloo charts the period between the Battle of Waterloo and the Peterloo Massacre that took place in Manchester four years later. On 16th August 1819, an estimated 60,000 people gathered in St Peter’s Field, Manchester to demand parliamentary reform and the representation of them and their city. The authorities and local magistrates misjudged the peaceful rally and sent the yeomanry and cavalry to disband the crowds. The subsequent violence resulted...

In Juliet, Naked director Jesse Peretz (Nurse Jackie, GLOW) offers a disarmingly compelling romantic comedy, which despite its decidedly contrived and uneven narrative still manages to deliver a hearteningly charming storyline about second chances in life, in this surprisingly enjoyable adaptation of Nick Hornby’s 2009 best selling novel of the same name. Annie (Rose Byrne) is stuck in a long-term relationship with Duncan (Chris O’Dowd), a nerdy university professor whom she feels has been taking their relationship for granted for several years. For Duncan, the couple are...

What we mean by horror is something that expands and evolves over the years. This is perhaps especially true of tech horror. From the possibilities of electricity being harnessed to horrific and tragic ends in Frankenstein, to the modern slew of desktop thrillers, horror writers and filmmakers have always harnessed new tech for new scares. Cam, written by Isa Mazzei (who herself used to work as a camgirl) introduces us to Alice (Madeline Brewer), who does cam shows as Lola...

“Did you?” asked the woman at the box office as I asked for my ticket for I Used to be Normal. I considered lying, but decided against it. “Not really”. I’ve been an obsessive fan of movies since I was 8 years old but, while some of the kinds of films I love best are (especially as a 37-year-old man) not exactly considered cool, I’ve never felt judged or that I should hide my enthusiasms. That seems to be one...