Film Reviews

Ruben Östlund’s mountain set ski drama, Force Majeure, landed with a bang at Cannes in 2014 and was quickly blanketed by an avalanche of critical success. Three years’ later, the Swedish born director returned and took home the festival’s top prize with The Square, a biting satire of the art world and a surreal, madcap deep dive into the complexities and flaws of humankind. Christian (Claes Bang), the model of Scandi-cool, is handsomely dishevelled in his fitted blazers, open neck...

Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) has forsaken her family fortune to become a London bicycle courier and amateur MMA fighter. After receiving an item from her missing (presumed dead) father, Lara goes in search of a cursed island in Japan carrying ancient treasure and an awful secret. After many of years in need of a revival, a new Tomb Raider game was launched in 2013, taking us to the origins of this pistol wielding archaeologist/thief. Jokes about DD pixels became obsolete;...

Nicholas Cage does a good line in B-movie flicks, they’re often quite bad but well loved because of the manic, hyper-real performances Cage gives and Mom and Dad is no different. In a typical American suburb tensions smolder below the surface in this horror-action-(unintentional?) comedy. The premise is that a bizarre event causes parents to turn on their children, filling them with murderous rage, completely disconnected from their usual loving faculties. Nicolas Cage’s character has moments of The Shining inflected...

After a frustratingly long period of absence, Lynne Ramsey (We Need To Talk About Kevin, 2011) is back with an equally gut-wrenching tale of crime and retribution which is set to thrill the Scottish director’s growing army fans. Based on Jonathan Ames’ novel of the same name, You Were Never Really Here offers an uncompromisingly gory and deliberately unsettling narrative packed full of dark and disturbing imagery, which is definitely not for the faint-hearted. Joaquin Phoenix is Joe (think Taxi...

In 1941 amateur inventor Hedy Lamarr worked with composer George Antheil to create and patent 'frequency hopping', which when applied in naval warfare could prevent enemy jamming of communications with torpedos and move the battle for the seas in the favour of the Allies. Although not put into use by the US Navy until the 1950s, 'frequency hopping' is now used as an integral element of everything from GPS to Wi-Fi. Lamarr's day job was performing as one of the...

What remains long after the credits of Petra Volpe’s sophomore feature, The Divine Order, have finished rolling is the historical context in which the film is set. There will undoubtedly be a great number who see this film (writer included) who will be shocked by the revelation that the women of Switzerland did not possess the right to vote at a federal level until 1971. More astounding still is that the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden remained steadfast in its refusal...

Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is a famous and respected dancer for the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) is a CIA agent in Russia who botches a meeting with a mole. After a horrific leg break, Dominika must retire, and is persuaded by her nefarious uncle in the SVR, Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts), to become a 'sparrow'; a highly trained sexual manipulator who can worm their way into the lonely lives of men like Nate. Lawrence really poured everything she...

While it is true that A Fantastic Woman is a trans drama, it's a description overlooks the many other compelling qualities that this Chilean film has. It is the type of simple categorisation that the title character Marina (Daniela Vega) faces and battles against. She may be a transgender woman, but there are many other sides to her personality and life. Her relationship with Orlando (Francisco Reyes), a kind older man with a gentle face, is loving and she lives...

Tarik Saleh’s Sundance winner, The Nile Hilton Incident, is a gritty, noir-thriller set in the days leading up to Egypt’s 2011 revolution. January 2011 and we’re landed in the dizzying hustle and bustle of Cairo’s amoral Kasr El-Nil police precinct where back-hand dealings and corruption run rife. The murder of a young singer at the Nile Hilton hotel and an (un)healthy handing of wasta have landed Police Commander Noredin (Fares Fares) the role of chief investigator on the case. His...