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4/5
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Strange Darling
(2023)
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Peter Bradshaw
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It’s in uncompromising bad taste but made with lethal precision and discipline.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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4/5
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Girls Will Be Girls
(2024)
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Cath Clarke
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There’s something almost Malory Towers-like about the way the school is portrayed, with its idiosyncrasies, its own language and way of doing things. As for Panigrahi, it’s hard to believe this is her first lead role.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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4/5
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The Goldman Case
(2023)
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Peter Bradshaw
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Kahn orchestrates the angry energy with an expert hand.
Posted Sep 19, 2024
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4/5
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Sugarcane
(2024)
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Peter Bradshaw
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Deeply disquieting and indeed enraging.
Posted Sep 18, 2024
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2/5
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Greedy People
(2024)
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Peter Bradshaw
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It’s not a bad premise by any means, but a noir romp, however bizarre and farcical, surely has to take place in a recognisably real world where there are plausibly real constraints on people’s behaviour.
Posted Sep 18, 2024
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3/5
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Cyborg: A Documentary
(2024)
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Peter Bradshaw
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Harbisson’s public persona is entertaining, maybe best appreciated as conceptual performance art.
Posted Sep 18, 2024
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1/5
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200% Wolf
(2024)
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Cath Clarke
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More like 3 percent watchable. Or 81 percent likely to give you a headache.
Posted Sep 17, 2024
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3/5
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Clawfoot
(2023)
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Leslie Felperin
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Eastwood’s deadpan expression, the one thing that strongly recalls her father as an actor, is a secret weapon here, along with Culpo’s snippy timing, which does justice to screenwriter April Wolfe’s chucklesome one-liners.
Posted Sep 17, 2024
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3/5
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The Old Man and the Land
(2023)
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Leslie Felperin
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Exceptional as Kinnear and Beecham may be as actors, their spiels here sound over-rehearsed, which deadens the emotional impact of what might have been a bold, fresh approach to the drama.
Posted Sep 17, 2024
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3/5
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Transformers One
(2024)
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Radheyan Simonpillai
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The writing team here isn’t above reciting the brand’s slogan to punctuate tropes. They fare better with the slapstick comedy -- how this movie makes pratfalls funny again is actually quite miraculous.
Posted Sep 17, 2024
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3/5
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Astrakan 79
(2023)
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Phuong Le
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Mourão’s film also makes possible an intergenerational dialogue between Martim and his son... Emerging from their conversation are sparks of understanding and compassion, which constitute the emotional beating heart of the film.
Posted Sep 17, 2024
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3/5
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Last Straw
(2023)
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Catherine Bray
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It’s encouraging to see low-budget early-career film-making with ambition.
Posted Sep 16, 2024
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2/5
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Haunted Heart
(2024)
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Catherine Bray
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The film takes its sweet time to get to where we sense it’s going, and then quickly runs out of steam when it does.
Posted Sep 16, 2024
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2/5
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Kid Snow
(2024)
|
Luke Buckmaster
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The dialogue also feels very finessed, borderline laboured. Pace and energy-wise there are issues too: the structure drifts and you don’t get a strong sense the drama is escalating and the stakes increasing.
Posted Sep 16, 2024
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3/5
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The End
(2024)
|
Radheyan Simonpillai
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At two and a half hours, Oppenheimer’s strange and ambitious deconstruction of human behaviour can also be draining. Maybe that’s intentional.
Posted Sep 13, 2024
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1/5
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Uglies
(2024)
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Adrian Horton
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Though it supposedly argues against human beings turned into synthetic quasi-droids, Uglies feels like just another throwaway product.
Posted Sep 13, 2024
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4/5
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Speak No Evil
(2024)
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Catherine Bray
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McAvoy is the most compelling reason to see this one. The original may be darker, but it didn’t have McAvoy.
Posted Sep 13, 2024
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3/5
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The Critic
(2023)
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Peter Bradshaw
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The film has an odd teatime glow of cosy-crime sentimentality which deadens the effect... But McKellen overrides these concerns; his glorious star quality and dash make him the only possible casting. His importance is critical.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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1/5
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Saturday Night
(2024)
|
Benjamin Lee
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It often feels like we're on a tour of the studio but without a guide -- lost, confused and increasingly annoyed, wondering why we're here and when we can go home.
Posted Sep 12, 2024
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3/5
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The Piano Lesson
(2024)
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Radheyan Simonpillai
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Sure, there’s an extravagance to the style, a first-time film-maker flex, but it works spectacularly.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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4/5
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Better Man
(2024)
|
Benjamin Lee
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It’s a film that exists on the precipice of falling apart but you’ll be surprised how well it stays together.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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3/5
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The 4:30 Movie
(2024)
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Leslie Felperin
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By far the best thing in the film is Ken Jeong as the theatre manager, preening and ridiculous, dispensing putdowns with surgically precise comic timing.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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2/5
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Subservience
(2024)
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Leslie Felperin
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If only the film were a little bit smarter and less predictable, it might have had a chance of becoming a cult classic.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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3/5
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The Queen of My Dreams
(2023)
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Cath Clarke
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Kaur really is the film’s revelation: her Azra is funny, spiky and gloriously unruly.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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4/5
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Vermiglio
(2024)
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Peter Bradshaw
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It is wonderfully acted with unaffected naturalism by its cast of professionals and newcomers and plays an extravagant, almost shameless pizzicato on the audience’s heartstrings.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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4/5
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Conclave
(2024)
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Benjamin Lee
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A glossily transferred airport novel first and a deeper drama about the world of religion second. Given how few high-class thrillers of this scale we actually get on the big screen at this moment, I would vote for more.
Posted Sep 11, 2024
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3/5
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In Camera
(2023)
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Cath Clarke
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With its dreamlike logic, looping around ideas and themes, In Camera is a disorientating film for disorienting times; opaque and enigmatic, scratching to get under the skin.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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3/5
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Betrayal
(2024)
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Leslie Felperin
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The suspense-building and denouement are adequate enough, but what makes this more interesting is how director Rodger Griffiths weaves in a subtle dissection of how abuse can damage families in different ways.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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3/5
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Reawakening
(2024)
|
Peter Bradshaw
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Though a little mannered, the film has intelligence and force.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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4/5
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The Assessment
(2024)
|
Peter Bradshaw
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A speculative and futurist contrivance that’s elegant, amusing, discomfiting and just the right side of preposterous. It’s an absurdist psychodrama of planned parenthood which mixes Brave New World with a little bit of Abigail’s Party.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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2/5
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Without Blood
(2024)
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Radheyan Simonpillai
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If only Angelina Jolie’s latest directorial effort, Without Blood, could be as pointed and consequential as her words in real life. If only the film, about the human toll of war, could draw blood as she does.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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3/5
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Heretic
(2024)
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Benjamin Lee
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Heretic might not be good clean fun but Grant makes it worth us getting dirty.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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3/5
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Place of Bones
(2023)
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Catherine Bray
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It’s pretty evident that this is a fairly low-budget film, with that faint sense of hired costumes about the western gear. But it’s entertaining enough and keeps you guessing.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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3/5
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Relay
(2024)
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Benjamin Lee
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There’s a thrill to Mackenzie’s on-the-ground authenticity, the kind of film New Yorkers will watch while quietly doing the headwork to place each scene.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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2/5
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The Return
(2024)
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Radheyan Simonpillai
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The Return is gorgeous to behold, but there just isn’t enough there.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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4/5
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How to Save a Dead Friend
(2022)
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Phuong Le
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Immortalised in these bittersweet snapshots of euphoria and torment, Morev and his extraordinary spirit live on in Syroechkovskaya’s tender gaze.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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4/5
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The Vourdalak
(2023)
|
Phil Hoad
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A delirious and oddly agreeable stopover.
Posted Sep 10, 2024
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2/5
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The Cut
(2024)
|
Benjamin Lee
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The more British director Sean Ellis prods and provokes, the hokier it all gets, a film about cutting weight that could have benefited from a leaner edit.
Posted Sep 09, 2024
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3/5
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Unstoppable
(2024)
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Benjamin Lee
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Robles isn’t hard to root for but Unstoppable, a rousing yet overdone biopic, tries too hard to get us there anyway.
Posted Sep 09, 2024
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4/5
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The Fire Inside
(2024)
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Benjamin Lee
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It’s a film that inspires and then enrages and gives its two central performers a tough emotional rollercoaster to ride, going all the way up before they come all the way down.
Posted Sep 09, 2024
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2/5
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Eden
(2024)
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Benjamin Lee
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The more his characters engage in very bad things, the more it becomes clear that perhaps Howard was indeed a very bad fit, the film drowning in the deep end.
Posted Sep 09, 2024
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2/5
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Elton John: Never Too Late
(2024)
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Radheyan Simonpillai
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The incredible access is expected since Never Too Late is produced by John’s husband and manager David Furnish, who co-directs alongside RJ Cutler. But perhaps that’s why it also feels so precious and tempered.
Posted Sep 09, 2024
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Piece By Piece
(2024)
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Radheyan Simonpillai
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The animated pizazz only works because Pharrell and the titans recruited as talking heads (we hear from Missy Elliott, Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z and Pusha T, for starters) are natural orators with terrific origin stories to tell.
Posted Sep 09, 2024
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2/5
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Nightbitch
(2024)
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Benjamin Lee
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If only it was as daring or as mischievous as its name and logline: malcontent suburban mother turns into dog. But the film is all bark and no bite, a shame for its lead -- but moreso for its as yet infallible writer-director.
Posted Sep 09, 2024
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1/5
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The Last Showgirl
(2024)
|
Benjamin Lee
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A forgettable, empty trifle at just 85 minutes, failing to give us enough of anything and certainly, sadly, failing to prove Anderson’s mettle as a dramatic actor.
Posted Sep 07, 2024
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4/5
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We Live in Time
(2024)
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Benjamin Lee
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It’s such a joy to watch two such assured and natural performers allowed the room to exercise both movie star and actor muscles as well as showcase their ease with both comedy and drama.
Posted Sep 07, 2024
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4/5
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Hard Truths
(2024)
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Peter Bradshaw
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It’s an exceptional performance from Jean-Baptiste.
Posted Sep 07, 2024
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2/5
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The Penguin Lessons
(2024)
|
Ryan Gilbey
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There is a glass-half-full approach and then there is submerging reality so deeply in whimsy, sentimentality and cultural cliche that it needn’t be there at all.
Posted Sep 07, 2024
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2/5
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Nutcrackers
(2024)
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Benjamin Lee
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It’s do-it-in-your-sleep territory for Stiller and to his credit, he does more than just sleepwalk through it, but his character is hazy and underwritten and the script so utterly, shamefully devoid of humour that he’s reduced to regressive pratfalls.
Posted Sep 07, 2024
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4/5
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April
(2024)
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Peter Bradshaw
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That month has never seemed crueller. The high arthouse influences are still detectable, but Kulumbegashvili has mastered and absorbed them and has an evolving film-language of her own.
Posted Sep 07, 2024
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