Film Reviews

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...

The Halloween franchise has taken many forms since the first film was released in 1978. In the subsequent years there have been no fewer than seven sequels, two reboots, several novels, and a series of comics. Rather than tangling itself in the franchise’s messy back catalogue, director David Gordon Green pretends that the underwhelming attempts to bring life back into the series never happened. The latest incarnation of Halloween acts as a direct sequel to the original and takes place exactly 40 years after...

It didn’t surprise anyone who saw his first film, Michael, to discover that director Markus Schleinzer used to work with Michael Haneke. Disquietingly still and at times striking, it was a debut that felt too in thrall to another filmmaker to be more than promising. Angelo, while sharing may of the same stylistic choices, is a more distinctive work. The Angelo of the title is the ‘court moor’ to several families in Viennese society in the 18th century, and the...

With his first two films, writer/director S. Craig Zahler established a distinctive voice. Working in exploitation cinema but unbound by the genre’s usual brief running times, he has stretched out his narratives, using the extra running time to dive more deeply into his characters than is typical in exploitation and to play with the genre. In Bone Tomahawk he morphed The Searchers into Cannibal Holocaust, with Brawl in Cell Block 99 he spent a good deal of time building both...

“You got a couple more years to fight” 14 year old Ronaldo tells his 9 year old half brother Titus, after spending some time teaching him to punch. He wants his younger sibling to know how to fight because, he says, nobody’s going to draw on a 9 year old. It’s just one of many sobering moments in Roberto Minervini’s beautiful and evocative portrait of a black community in Louisiana in the wake of the death of Alton Sterling and...

I have a longstanding policy at the London Film Festival of trying to discover films from new places, so whenever the chance comes to see something from a country whose cinema is entirely new to me, I try to take it. I believe this is my first Kenyan film, but it’s also something of a first for Kenya; a film about a lesbian relationship from a country where LGBTQ relationships are still punishable by law. Initially, it was banned for...