Film Reviews

In this Russian drama, a couple in the process of a bitter divorce has selfishly ignored their twelve-year-old son Alexey (Matvey Novikov) in pursuit of new relationships. When the boy goes missing, the pair are finally forced to acknowledge his existence before they can continue with their lives. Father Boris (Aleksey Rozin) comes across as selfish and uncaring, mother Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) worse. She emphasises how much she wishes she had aborted Alexey in the womb with savage glee, giving...

Directed by London Has Fallen writer Christian Gudegas and staring Gerard Butler, Den Of Thieves is the sort of testosterone laden action flick that doesn’t seem to care much about offering anything resembling a coherent storyline, opting instead for a lazily constructed and needlessly meandering narrative, which in the end only succeeds in alienating even the most ardent of action fans. Furthermore, the film falls at the first hurdle by its inability to decide which story it wants to tell,...

Amber (Sibylla Deen) is torn between her older lover Demi (Harvey Keitel) and her devout Muslim family in Bradford. When Demi dies, his driver Donald (Gabriel Bryne) is instructed to kick Amber out the flat she was living in for the adulterous getaways. Against his better judgement, a sympathy for Amber's plight drags Donald into an underworld totally at odds with his unassuming personality. There is an early scene of Amber flouncing around as 'See Line Woman' plays and Donald...

Makala, the new film from French documentarian Emmanuel Gras, is an elegiac, lyrical journey into the heart, soul and determined resilience of a young charcoal producer in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kabwita is a 28 year old Congolese man who, with his wife Lydie and their three children, lives in poverty. They rent a small, ramshackle home in the bush, and although their accommodation is basic, the full weight of their situation is clearly communicated when we see Lydie...

A decade on from their first collaboration, director Paul Thomas Anderson and actor Daniel Day-Lewis reunite for another tale driven by strong personalities, power struggles, and personal obsession. Set in 1950s London, Phantom Thread follows Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), a fashion designer who makes clothes for high society and even royalty on occasion; a meticulous craftsman, with a precise routine and method. One day he meets Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps), a waitress at a sea side restaurant, and is instantly...

Pedro Pinho’s first feature film, The Nothing Factory, is a three hour social-realist epic that’s baggier than a pair of nineties jeans and so overly long that dullness eventually turns into despair. The film takes inspiration from the real life story of a group of factory workers who, in a unique case of experimental self-management, took charge of a lift building factory in Portugal. When the workers of said factory discover machinery being sneaked off premises late one night, panic...

For those who love film, Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya’s documentary, The Cinema Travellers, will find a special place in your heart. Through the lives of three men, who are bound by celluloid, the beauty of film, and its projection, we are provided an intimate, fly on the wall look at travelling cinemas in the rural parts of India’s Maharashtra state. There is the shrewd businessman, exhibiting films at many of India’s religious festivals, the charitable showman who screens films...

Richard Linklater’s latest film is a sequel, of sorts, to Hal Ashby’s 1971 great, The Last Detail, which starred a young Jack Nicholson. That film was concerned with questions around the ideas of legacy & impermanence, and Last Flag Flying continues this tradition, whilst also being shot through with a hit of pure Linklater in the form of a hangout film. Ashby’s film centres on two US sailors transporting a third to a military prison and Linklater’s film shares a...

After beginning with The Hunger Games in 2012, the tenth and (*prayers*) final film amongst the teens facing dystopian peril YA subgenre belongs to Maze Runner: The Death Cure. The Maze Runner films have always sat somewhere in the middle, never enjoying the cultural capital of The Hunger Games franchise, nor the career destroying banality of the Divergent trilogy. 20th Century Fox have also had the decency to adapt the third book in James Dashner's trilogy into one final film...