Film Reviews

By Linda Marric Averaging around a film a year for the last two decades, Francois Ozon has proven himself to be one of most prolific filmmakers of his generation. From the brilliant 8 femmes (2002) and Swimming Pool (2003), to the highly acclaimed French Belgian farce Potiche (2010), Ozon has managed to excel himself every time by bringing something new and precious, all the while paying homage to some of his favourite European cinematic heroes. His films have managed to...

By Linda Marric @linda_marric Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a smart, socially conscious, funny and genuinely terrifying horror movie. Made by Blumhouse, who were also responsible for the Insidious series, the film has been one of the most eagerly awaited genre movies of the year, on the strength of its trailer alone. Dealing with issues of race in the post-Obama era, Get Out cleverly pays homage to a whole host of films from Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (Stanley Kramer,...

Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP Outside of Akira, the odd Studio Ghibli production, and a couple episodes of Dragon Ball Z watched as a child I haven’t really seen much anime. Despite an almost constant supply of acclaimed Japanese animation these films have never quite seemed to have established the audience that many believe they should. A Silent Voice then stands as the next in a long line of anime films hoping to covert English speaking cinema goers to the genre. A Silent...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel On cursory inspection, the new film from French-Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan, the sixth already from a man not due to turn 28 until next month, is a distant proposition. It seems sterile and forbidding, full of stagey artifice, which is not necessarily a surprise given it’s an adaptation of Jean-Luc Lagarce’s play of the same name. And it is all these things, only very deliberately so to achieve an even greater impact. The premise is simple...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel Massimo is a man who should have it all. He lives in a world of elegant apartments and swanky parties before heading out to fashion shows, football games, and war zones, the varied diet that comes with his journalism job. Yet for a man living such an interesting life, he’s not actually lived a single minute of it. Sweet Dreams is a surface deep attempt to show how childhood trauma can destabilise everything that follows. Marco...

By Linda Marric @linda_marric  House of Flying Daggers director Yimou Zhang new film The Great Wall is a spectacular behemoth of a film. A fantasy which centres around one of the many mythical stories surrounding the mystery of great wall of China. The film is to this date, the biggest ever co-production between China and Hollywood and features some of the most accomplished actors and martial-arts experts in the business. It is also Yimou Zhang’s first English speaking production. The...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel The treatment of refugees is still an ignored problem. Whether the West is directly or indirectly involved - and given the long tentacles of history, it’s usually one of the two - the fate of those left to bear the brunt of chaotic violence and repression is rarely given attention. The Longest Road is an attempt to remedy this, and while repeatedly falling prey to muddled thinking, it gamely grapples with a complex subject. Clocking it...

It is easy to get caught up in the annual awards coverage and forget that entries are films, and not just news stories. Articles surrounding Hidden Figures have placed a large emphasis on its diverse cast and how it is somehow an antidote to the failings of last year’s nominations. All this attention seems rather unfair, as it ignores the merits and qualities that are on display in this film. Set in 1960s Virginia, where racism and sexism were generally...

By Wyndham Hacket Pain With a McDonald’s seemingly in every town centre and motorway service centre in the world it’s hard to imagine a time before the fast-food chain. Whether in the small island of Réunion off Madagascar or the Negev Desert in Israel you know the familiar burger and fries is never too far away. Over the last 60 years, McDonald’s has not just become one the world’s most recognisable and ironic products, but has also come to feed...