The Shanghai Animation Film Studio was a vital part of China’s animation industry, both in terms of forming national styles as well as creating international interest in the country’s contributions to the medium. An online Chinese film season, running until 12 May, boasts an exciting selection of shorts and features from the studio’s history; predominantly Read More
Notturno
This captivating docu-reverie from Gianfranco Rosi reveals the aftereffects of war for people in the Middle East. A shaft of light from a window in a former prison somewhere in the Middle East cuts a dynamic diagonal along an adjoining wall, where a mother is doubled over in grief for the son who lost his Read More
Ballad of a White Cow – first-look review
Ballad of a White Cow – first-look review Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam’s drama takes a dim view of Iran’s discriminatory justice system. In 2020, Mohammad Rasoulof’s There Is No Evil became the third Iranian film in the past decade to win Berlin’s top prize, following Jafar Panahi’s Taxi Tehran and Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation. Read More
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy – first-look review
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy – first-look review Ryûsuke Hamaguchi returns with another female-oriented drama about the intricacies of everyday human dynamics. The international festival circuit took some time to catch on to Japanese filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. His first few features mostly played domestic festivals until Happy Hour, an ambitious drama about four middle-class women Read More
Petite Maman – first-look review
Petite Maman – first-look review An eight-year-old girl encounters a young version of her mother in Céline Sciamma’s transportive fable. If you could travel back in time and meet your mother as a child, what would you say to her? That’s the fantastical, slightly eerie premise of Céline Sciamma’s follow-up to her rapturously received 2019 Read More
Ridley Scott eyes Jodie Comer for the female lead in his Napoleon epic
Ridley Scott currently has a lot of irons in the fire. He’s putting the finishing touches on his period epic set in 14th-century France, deep into shooting on his drama about the killing of Gucci with Lady Gaga, batting around ideas for sequels to Gladiator and Alien: Covenant, and attached to a barely-existent espionage picture Read More
Moxie
Amy Poehler’s second feature behind the camera misses the mark in its search for humour and solidarity. You would not be amiss for thinking Moxie is a horror film from its opening sequence. It turns out Vivian (Hadley Robinson) running through dark woodland unable to scream for help was a just nightmare. In fact, the Read More
The Scary of Sixty-First – first-look review
The Scary of Sixty-First – first-look review A woman becomes possessed by the spirit of one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims in this misguided psychological horror. There are films that are bad. There are films that are so bad they’re good. Then there are films like The Scary of Sixty-First which, in their ill-conceived irony, breeze Read More
Tides – first-look review
Tides – first-look review Tim Fehlbaum’s effective if overfamiliar sci-fi sees an astronaut become shipwrecked on a desolate Earth. A German-Swiss co-production with Roland Emmerich among its executive producers, Tides is an atmospheric sci-fi anchored by an engaging performance from Nora Arnezeder. Although computer-generated vistas are employed for the presentation of a dystopian Earth, Tim Read More
Why I love Jean Harlow’s performance in Wife vs Secretary
Jean Harlow’s mystique exists in the sweet spot between glamorous and salacious. Her legacy is that of the original Hollywood bombshell, arousing images of statement eyebrows framed by perfect curls and satin gowns cut perilously close to the navel. But it is also the kind where success is flanked by tragedy, cemented by her untimely Read More
Tina – first-look review
Tina – first-look review Tina Turner has the final say on her tumultuous life and glittering career in this all-access documentary. Tina Turner is a transfixing presence on screen. That broad red lipsticked mouth; that unmistakable gravelly voice; that big blonde wig teased into an almost crown-like splendour; and those strutting, peerlessly toned legs. Every Read More
Ted K – first-look review
Ted K – first-look review Sharlto Copley stars as the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski in this so-so chronicle of the notorious terrorist. Given that Netflix are currently streaming two shows about the life of American terrorist Ted Kaczynski, one has to question what if anything Tony Stone’s Ted K can add to the story. As it Read More
Introduction – first-look review
Introduction – first-look review A young man travels to Berlin in the latest lilting relationship drama from South Korea’s Hong Sang-soo. Hong Sang-soo has been creating films for a quarter of a century now. He made his debut aged 35 with The Day a Pig Fell into the Well in 1996 and has since directed Read More
Drift Away – first-look review
Drift Away – first-look review Jérémie Renier finds himself all at sea in Xavier Beauvois’ slow-burn drama about a grief-stricken policeman. Xavier Beauvois’ latest directorial outing opens with a celebration and a suicide. It’s a grisly juxtaposition that almost seems as though it’s being played for laughs, as the victim in question interrupts a tuxedoed Read More
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn – first-look review
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn – first-look review A leaked sex tape threatens the career of a school teacher in Radu Jude’s wry social commentary. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is the latest feature from Romanian filmmaker and Berlin Film Festival regular Radu Jude. With an outlandish premise and formal absurdities to match Read More
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché
A stirring and fraught mother-daughter relationship is at the centre of this lively punk rock doc. What appears from the outset as another well-meaning and robust artist bio-documentary which offers a whistle-stop tour through a life lived at the vanguard of creative expression, is actually a fairly sad film about a daughter reflecting on the Read More
I’m Your Man
I’m Your Man Maria Schrader’s apathetic romantic drama about a humanoid robot relationship is lacking in vitality. An adaptation of a short story of the same name by Emma Braslavsky, Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man sees Alma (Maren Eggert) enter into a trial relationship with a humanoid robot named Tom (Dan Stevens) who has been Read More
Nomadland
Chloé Zhao goes three for three with this extraordinary chronicle of life on the fringes of American society. At the start of Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, a title card informs us that in 2011, after 88 years of operation, the United States Gypsum Corporation closed its plant in the small town of Empire, Nevada. The residents Read More
Memory Box – first-look review
Memory Box – first-look review Three women learn to reconcile the past in this moving drama from Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. Freely adapted from director Joana Hadjithomas’ account of coming of age in 1980s Beirut, this affecting drama tackles intergenerational trauma while espousing the value of preserving the past for future generations. In present Read More
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World and the dark legacy of Death in Venice
It was in London on 1 March, 1971, at the world premiere of Death in Venice, when Luchino Visconti first branded 16-year-old Björn Andrésen “the most beautiful boy in the world”. Inebriated by the attention, the boisterous director paraded the young Swedish boy among royals and celebrities as if the coy creature standing by his Read More
The United States vs Billie Holiday
A star is born in Andra Day, the phenomenal lead of Lee Daniels’ ponderous and overlong musical biopic. Attempts are being made to both have and eat cake in Lee Daniels’ sometimes sumptuous, often laborious, occasionally nerve-tingling biopic, The United States vs Billie Holiday. It may not look like it, but this is a cut Read More
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry
Billie Eilish and her tight-knit family navigate her first half a decade of stardom in this intimate documentary. Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell is not like other teenagers, lest you be fooled by her Rick and Morty backpack or the fact that she’s a card-carrying Belieber. The World’s a Little Blurry, a new documentary from Read More
Verdict
This sensitive and harrowing portrait of domestic abuse looks at how the justice system fails women. Verdict begins with violence. Joy (Max Eigenmann) is attacked by her husband Dante (Kristoffer King) while their weeping daughter watches on. She screams as her limbs are beaten and her face is pummelled to a swollen pulp. Her daughter Read More
Justine
Jamie Patterson’s latest sees a young woman battling addiction find redemption through queer love. Lying eyes closed and neck-deep in the bathtub, Justine (Tallulah Haddon) is utterly numb to the world. The echo of her landlord hammering against her door for rent is just one of the many things she is trying to block out. Read More
David Squires on… The News of the World
Published 26 Feb 2021 Share this
Steven Soderbergh has set another film at HBO Max, with Zoë Kravitz starring
No rest for the wicked, a category that evidently includes the never-tiring Steven Soderbergh, who’s killing time while waiting for his next movie to come out by beginning work on his next next movie. We’re all eagerly anticipating the release of the period-piece action picture No Sudden Move on HBO Max, but he’s already making some sudden Read More
Cherry
Tom Holland’s junkie GI goes to hell and back in the Russo brothers’ failed attempt at serious filmmaking. Remember when Iraq War movies were hot? Over the past few decades there have been numerous attempts to reconcile the myriad causes and effects of the so-called War on Terror, ranging from hard-hitting homeland dramas (American Sniper) Read More
Pixar weaves a fantasy of Italian mer-boys in the first Luca trailer
For Pixar, the release-schedule logjam caused by the disruptive, destructive force of the pandemic has now created a period of unusually prolific output. Onward debuted to lukewarm notices last spring, the more ambitious and well-liked Soul came online two short months ago, and we’re already less than four months out from their next original release. Read More
Creation Stories – first-look review
Creation Stories – first-look review This muddled biopic of music industry figurehead Alan McGee features some truly disastrous cameo appearances. The spirit of executive producer Danny Boyle looms large over Creation Stories, a biopic of Scottish businessman Alan McGee, whose influential Creation Records label launched such acts as Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine and Oasis. Read More
David Fincher will adapt French graphic novel ‘The Killer’ for his next film
Despite some polarized reviews for Mank, Netflix-Fincher relations remain stable and amicable. Though the accomplished filmmaker still has an awards season in front of him to get through, he’s started work on a new feature, another collaboration with the streaming mega-studio and a return to his home-turf genre. Deadline reports that David Fincher’s next film Read More