Film Reviews

How do you approach making a follow up to a film that didn’t need a follow up? Do you stay true to the themes and tone of the original or forge a new path across the Mexican desert? Stefano Sollima’s Sicario 2: Soldado opts to stay true to what made the first film so unexpectedly brilliant. The preceding film had been a taught, atmospheric thriller as Denis Villeneuve guided the audience through two hours of miserable, brilliant action. The fact...

In his debut feature as director, actor Stephen Moyer (True Blood, The Double) offers a decently put together and beautifully acted family drama which seems to tick all the right boxes thematically, but sadly fails to completely convince due to its overwrought and slightly-too-meandering screenplay. Written by actor turned screenwriter Denis O’Hare (True Blood, American Horror Story), The Parting Glass follows a day in the life of a group of adult siblings and their father, as they come to terms...

Fatih Akin’s new German drama about a woman hellbent on seeking revenge after the murder of her family is a rather contrived, facile and at times overly melodramatic production that could have easily benefited from losing some schmaltz in favour of a more nuanced narrative. Staring Diane Kruger and co-written by Akin (Soul Kitchen, Goodbye Berlin) and screenwriter Hark Bohm, In The Fade presents an interesting enough premise, but sadly falls at the first hurdle by failing to come across...

Billy (Alex Lawther) is a flamboyant gay kid, largely estranged from his father (Larry Pine), until he has to move for the last year of high school when his beloved mother (Bette Midler) is ‘taken ill’. In a conservative school, Billy doesn’t fit in and is at one point beaten so badly that he ends up in a coma. When Billy recovers Flip (Ian Nelson), the high school football star he has become unlikely friends with, suggests that he tone...

One can’t help but feel that Sara Driver has missed an opportunity for a truly exciting and insightful documentary about one of the 20th century’s most interesting and revolutionary artists with her first film since her feature, When Pigs Fly. Although the title suggests an exploration of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s later teenage years, Driver fails to deliver.  A majority of the films modest 78-minute runtime dedicates itself to exploring the emergence and proliferation of New York’s colourful art scene circa the...

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...