Film Reviews

Directed by Corin Hardy, the new instalment in what is now being referred to as the “Conjuring Universe" is a rather stale and scare-free affair that’s only just slightly rescued by its female lead’s incredible screen presence, and remarkable performance. Written by Gary Dauberman (It, Annabelle) from a story by James Wan, The Nun offers more of the same old tropes and hackneyed ideas we’ve come to expected from this hugely lucrative and admittedly very popular franchise, but in the end the film fails to bring anything new to...

Over the past couple of years there has been a growing conversation about representation in film. The Miseducation of Cameron Post isn’t the first coming of age film about an LGBT teen (indeed, it’s enough of a subgenre to have its own established cliches), nor is it the first of those to deal with ‘conversion therapy’ (1999’s But I’m A Cheerleader, also directed by a queer woman, looks at a similar situation with a more comedic eye). It is, however,...

Kicking off this year’s Venice International Film Critics’ Week is Indian fantasy-horror Tumbbad. From the go, it quickly becomes apparent that Tumbbad is on course to serve as a parable for the corrupting nature of greed.  Narration tells us, as we sweep over the bleak, rain-sodden countryside of Tumbadd in the far reaches of western India, the legend of Hastar, a God undone by his own his avarice. Rahi Anil Barve and co-director Adesh Prasad have crafted a film with the ambitions...

Hermann Vaske attempts to tackle why we are creative in his newest documentary of the same name. Beneath the thin veneer this documentary, helmed by a director who believes he has cast off into the waters of the great thinkers in his pursuit of a single truth to an unanswerable question, is a film clearly dreamt up by advertising exec.  Slick, stylised, but ultimately lacking in imaginative energy, it is the kind of “creative content,” that has been perfected by marketers,...

For my money, one of the major new cinematic talents discovered in recent years was not an actor, a director or a screenwriter but 37-year-old cinematographer Lukasz Zal, who was camera operator on Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida. Zal stepped in as DP just after just a few days when Ryszard Lenczewski left the film. It could have been said that Lenczewski laid the foundation for that gorgeous film but with this, his second collaboration with Pawlikowski, I think a solid argument...

Adapted from Victor Headley’s novel of the same name, Yardie is set predominately in the 1980s and opens in Jamaica. It is here that we find Dennis (Aml Ameen), a young man who runs errands for mob boss King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd). Dennis spends his days stumbling his way through small jobs while plotting revenge on his brother Jerry’s (Everaldo Creary) killer. Believing he can trust him, Fox asks Dennis to deliver a package of cocaine to his distributor in...

The Happytime Murders is the first feature film presentation from the production company, Henson Alternative, a relatively new arm of the Henson Company and it is a shame that the first feature length film to come from them is a woefully unfunny, cold picture where the initial humour wears off within a matter of minutes. The film stars Melissa McCarthy as Detective Connie Edwards in the human role as she and a hardboiled ex-Muppet cop Phil, voiced and manipulated by...

Whether it is the overtly racist Birth of a Nation – a film that President Woodrow Wilson screened at the White House – or Gone with the Wind which denies the truth about slavery,cinema for a long time failed in its depictions of race. 1989 was a monumental year on the global stage but it also saw a young black director called Spike Lee cover the topic of race with the intricacies and understanding that it deserved. Do the Right...

Best known for her editing work on the long-running television documentary series Panorama and Dispatches, Renee Edwards takes the director’s seat for the first time with her underwhelming documentary, One Note at a Time, an examination of New Orleans’ music scene post-hurricane Katrina. In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, which devastated the city and claimed the lives of over 1,800 residents, many residents chose to leave.  Amongst them were the stalwarts of the Crescent City’s music scene, a number...