Film Reviews

Directed by Greg Barker, former freelance journalist and war correspondent turned documentary filmmaker, The Final Year plays out like a swansong turned tragedy that documents the Obama administration’s final year in office. Centred on Obama’s foreign policy team and their efforts to shift America’s overseas approach away from a militarised one and, instead, towards one that is founded in engagement and diplomacy under the shared belief that American exceptionalism is rooted in, “what we stand for and how we act,...

Stéphane Brizé’s adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s novel, A Woman’s Life (Une Vie in French), is a strangely affecting film that circles the sink hole of despair telling the life story of Jeanne (Judith Chemla), a young woman in 19th century France. Recently returned from her convent boarding school, Jeanne begins her adulthood as a well of unbridled hope and joy. There is a child-like innocence to her as she whiles away warm afternoons gardening with her father. With the...

Lili Fini Zanuck’s latest film is a rock-doc that chronicles the turbulent life of Eric Clapton. The connection between director and subject goes back at least a quarter-century with Clapton scoring the only other film she has directed, Rush in 1991. The documentary the pair have created is engaging for the first 90 minutes but ends up losing its way. The film opens with the early life of Eric Clapton, which was in his own words “blissful” until a horrible...

Grief isn’t an emotion that can be easily managed, or simply placed into a box and thrown to the back of the downstairs cupboard. It isn’t an emotion that is fleeting; it lingers, manifesting itself through our actions and often making them appear irrational and suspect. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri explores this idea in a character study that is at times both volatile and devastating. We first meet Mildred Hayes, mother of murdered teenager Angela Hayes, driving alone on...

Where Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk looked at the British Army’s retreat from the European mainland almost exclusively from the perspective of the service men involved, Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour looks at the same events from the perspective of politicians behind it. Opening with Neville Chamberlain’s (Ronald Pickup) resignation as Prime Minister, the film covers Winston Churchill’s (Gary Oldman) first month in office. Generally mistrusted by his own party, but seen as the only person that Parliament at large will accept, Churchill’s...

Oil tycoon J. Paul Getty was the richest man in the world when his grandson was kidnapped on the streets of Rome in 1973. It is an intriguing episode that serves as inspiration for Ridley Scott’s latest feature, All the Money in the World. The film begins with the kidnapping and quickly details the events leading up to it, showing us how J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) made his riches, as well as the breakdown of his son’s marriage. By...

The idea of Ben Stiller playing a self-pitying white dude is not a particularly original one, yet here he finds himself once again in this new film by School of Rock writer, Mike White. Essentially a comedy drama, Brad’s Status is a film that yearns to be thought-provoking and rewarding, but how much you buy into this is dependent on how much you care about Ben Stiller’s titular character. Stiller plays Brad Sloan, a 47 year old in the grips...

Marc J. Francis and Max Pugh’s documentary, Walk with Me, sets itself up as if it were to be an exploration of a truly interesting character. A title card introduces Thich Nhát Hanh, an exiled Zen Buddhist Monk from Vietnam, who, having relocated to France, has established the Plum Village Monastery. Instead, the film meanders through a slice of life portraiture of monastic living, while failing to offer the audience anything that feels particularly engaging or insightful. The footage, collected...

You can almost hear the faint chorus of “America, fuck yeah!” in the background of Steven Quale’s Bosnia-set, Navy SEALs action-adventure romp. Penned (in part) by Luc Besson, Renegades is a mash-up of Team America and Three Kings without any of the cynicism or irony, and played with the same straight faced, “America the Great” determination of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. A hardened group of all-American frogmen in Sarajevo, during the Bosnian War, learn from a local barmaid, Lara (Sylvia...