Film Reviews

If you have ever wondered what Wallace & Gromit’s ancestors would have looked like then the latest feature from the much loved Aardman Animation Studio will have you catered for. Set on prehistoric earth, somewhere near Manchester, Early Man follows a rabbit hunting tribe and its inquisitive and likable member Dug (Eddie Redmayne). They live in a green and luscious crater on what is an otherwise barren planet. One day, their idyllic lives are ruined as the more developed Bronze...

A curious oddity in more ways than one, Downsizing heralds writer/director Alexander Payne’s return to original storytelling, his script here being the first since his debut feature, Citizen Ruth, to not be adapted from a novel. Like Ruth, Downsizing is a gutsy contemplation of American society, but one that’s unlikely to inspire the sort of profound musings that are prominent in his more perceptive works: it isn’t as eccentric as Election or Sideways, nor as sharp as Nebraska & About...

My Life Story, directed by Julien Temple, is a soaring success.  It is the filmed stage show of Graham “Suggs” McPherson, frontman for the iconic 80s’ Ska-Pop band, Madness. Coming in the form of a one man show that expertly blends archival footage, animation and dramatized re-enactment, the show is an autobiographical account of Suggs’ life story structured loosely around his quest to discover more about the father he never had. It is a personal, sprawling spoken word documentary that...

There was a time when the release of a new Pixar film was looked upon by critics and consumers alike as something of a cultural event. But recent years have proved there to be major chinks in the animation powerhouse’s creative armour; the shameless merchandising of the Cars franchise; the growing dependence on sub-par sequels to fill the slate; the ever-greater reliance on a specific series of narrative & thematic tropes. Though their output remains consistently entertaining, the heartfelt intellect...

The Commuter is the latest in an increasingly long line of action films to have starred Liam Neeson. This time around he plays Michael MaCauley, a proud family man and insurance salesman, who takes the same train to and from work every day. On the train home one day a mysterious woman called Joanna (Vera Farmiga) sits opposite him and offers him $100,000 if he can identify the person with a bag containing illegal goods. While at first unsure whether...

As Steven Spielberg’s latest feature film, The Post, makes its way onto our screens this week, the parallels that can be drawn between the story it tells and the current political landscape won’t be lost on anyone. Centring around the events which led to a war between the Nixon administration and a huge chunk of the American press, the film seems to deliberately play on our collective hankering for the golden age of investigative journalism, and rightly highlights the need...

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...