Film Reviews

It would be easy to dismiss Ocean’s 8 as being little more than the cynical cash in it appears on the surface; a crass attempt to squeeze a few more bucks out of a stagnating franchise by assuming the façade of a contemporary ‘woman’s picture’. Indeed while this critic doesn’t concur with such musings, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t in the back of my mind as I settled in to watch this soft reboot-cum-sequel to Steven Soderbergh’s...

Three years after the release of his debut feature Mediterranea, Italian director Jonas Carpignanoreturns with his second film A Ciambra. The title refers to the region of Italy where the film is set. It is here that we find a community of Romanian gypsies who live on the periphery of society. Among them is Pio (Pio Amato), a 14 year old boy who is desperate to grow up and take part in the criminal activity that is the sole source...

On April 26, 1977, Studio 54 opened its doors for the first time to crowds desperate to get the other side of the velvet ropes and past the blacked out doors that kept them out.  For many, the name undoubtedly conjures up images of whirring disco balls, celebrities and the seductive allure of debauchery.  Here, on the sweaty pit of the dance floor, crowds of Quaalude popping, disco-beat boppers welcomingly fell face forward into a world of vice and hedonism....

With the success in 2017 of Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning, post-race horror Get Out, or more recently John Krasinski’s spine-chilling sci-fi hit A Quiet Place, it would be far too simplistic to speak of a sudden horror resurgence, especially when one considers that beyond the hype created around a few Hollywood-backed productions, horror fans have never really stopped consuming the genre in the same way they always have, and you only have to look at the continued success of horror themed film...

Sophie Brooks’ debut feature is a plucky heart-warmer that’s tender and beautifully observed. When Diana (Zosia Mamet) moves back to New York after a prolonged stay in London, she moves into her new apartment only to discover her ex-boyfriend lives in the flat below.  With a premise like that, Sophie Brooks’ debut feature, The Boy Downstairs, could quite easily have descended into the forgettable territory of low-budget, high concept rom-coms.  Instead, the director crafts a wonderfully tender and beautifully observed...

Andrew Kötting’s previous film, released this time last year, Edith Walks, paid homage to and told the story of Edith Swan Neck, the wife of King Harold.  Shot as an absurdist, quasi-experimental documentary, it followed Kötting and a band of merry travellers as they walked the 108 miles between Waltham Abbey to St. Leonards on Sea.  It was, in short, pish. Kötting returns with another experimental feature that blends narrative fiction with film essay in Lek and the Dogs.  And,...

Jurassic Park became the highest grossing film of all time when it was released in the summer of 1993. Its impact has been undeniable, as it ushered in the era of special effect laden blockbusters that we are still witnessing to this day. The original may have been followed by two disappointing sequels but the series roared back into life in 2015 with Jurassic World and returns once more with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The problem with the franchise’s sequels was that they were...

In his latest feature film L’Amant Double, prolific French director Francois Ozon offers a fantastically bonkers premise that’s likely to bewilder and enchant audiences in equal measures. Playing with classical thriller tropes, and with a heavy dose of Gallic eroticism added for good measure, the film owes more to Hitchcock and Cronenberg than to the director’s more recent offerings. Freely adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’s novel ‘Lives Of The Twins’, L’Amant Double stars Marine Vacth as Chloe, a former model...

Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager is a well-crafted documentary that focuses on both Robson’s football and personal life. So much so that the film does not open with a typical, fawning introduction but instead we are given a detailed and grisly account of the invasive cancer surgery Robson went under shortly before landing the job as manager of Barcelona. Robson is instantly set up as fallible and, in a genre, where reverence so often collapses into gushing hyperbole, it...