Film Reviews

The nuanced ambition of Kathleen Hepburn’s 2017 TIFF entry and debut feature, Never Steady, Never Still, based on her short film of the same name, is soaked in the melancholy of quiet suffering. The film takes inspiration from Hepburn’s close personal experience with Parkinson’s disease, the director’s mother having suffered from it for the last 24 years. Centring on an Alberta based family of three, Judy (Shirley Henderson), mother to son Jamie (Théodore Pellerin), and wife to devoted husband Ed...

It is amusing to imagine if French director Claire Denis watches many of the American romantic comedies that we know all too well. Whether she does or not, her latest film, Let The Sunshine In, is a clever antidote to the clichés and indulgences that have come to define the genre. The ever reliable Juliette Binoche stars as Isabelle, a divorced artist who is looking for true love for the first time. Her performance is full of nuance and an...

French drama Custody (original title Jusqu'à la garde) opens with mother Miriam (Léa Drucker) and father Antoine (Denis Ménochet) arguing over Antoine's rights to see his two children. Initially there is a level of sympathy for Antoine, and an audience can question whether he is being unfairly maligned by a seemingly dislikable mother. I was also reminded of the issues of tit for tat arguments in a family court between parents, with what is the truth being a matter of...

In the couple years since Steven Spielberg professed that the western was dead, we have seen a mini revival in the genre. Whether it is The Hateful Eight, Hell or High Water, or even The Revenant a new generation of filmmakers have connected with this type of film. German director Valeska Grisebach is the latest to reimagine the genre with her third feature. Western is set in a remote rural town in Bulgaria, near the Greek boarder. There, German workers...

Sergey Loznitsa’s latest offering, A Gentle Creature, is an exercise in suffering. A gruelling odyssey that delves the depths of the human spirit, that by the film’s end leaves you coming up gasping for air. Derived from the title of a Dostoevsky short story, Loznitsa’s A Gentle Creature, which competed at last year’s Cannes Film Festival for the much coveted Palme d’Or award, is imbued with the deep pain and suffering of the Russian people. Whilst the narrative of the...

In the same week that Sergio Leone’s classic western A Fistful of Dollars is rereleased, Indonesian director Mouly Surya brings us a subversive reworking the genre and its masculinised tropes. Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts opens on the island of Sumba where Marlina (Marsha Timothy) is mourning the death of her husband. A group of seven men, led by the grey haired Markus (Egy Fedly), arrive at her home intent on raping her and taking her livestock. Before the...

Loosely based on the video game series of the same name and staring the force of nature that is the mighty Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Rampage had all the makings of yet another meat-headed, big, brash and silly disaster movie, so it was a genuine surprise to find out just how much fun this movie has turned out to be. With the recent release of the hugely disappointing sequel to Guillermo de Toro’s Pacific Rim which left more than a...

While LGBTQ stories have found their rightful place within the safety of indie cinema for a while now — the success of Call Me By Your Name this year, and Moonlight in 2017 can attest to this — the same cannot be said about the visibility of non-stereotypical gay characters in mainstream productions, especially in those aimed at younger audiences. However, with the arrival of Love, Simon, Greg Berlanti's heartwarming tale about a teenage gay romance, things seem to be...

120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) is a French drama film by Robin Campillo, focusing on the actions of ACT UP Paris, a direct-action movement looking to effect change in the fight against the Aids epidemic of the 1990s. The film is moving, combining triumph, failure and bliss to create a sensitive portrait of the young, fearless and fear-filled ensemble. Campillo, who scripted Laurent Cantet’s 2008 Palme-winning The Class, here writes & directs, and he does so with a certain amount...