The inability to open oneself to love is the main beast of Bertrand Bonello’s striking and cerebral film that follows a stalled relationship over three time periods, though the message in the central portion doesn’t have the same resonance as the other two.
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Mexican visionary Guillermo Del Toro’s first animated feature is a visually ravishing but dramatically wooden update of much-filmed Italian fairy tale ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’.
Two of Iran’s biggest actors, Taraneh Alidoosti and Navid Mohammadzadeh, play double roles in Mani Haghighi’s chilling, fast-paced thriller with allegorical overtones about life in contemporary Iran.
Featuring a strong ensemble cast including Tom Burke and Jenna Coleman, Neil Maskell’s directing debut ‘Klokkenluider’ is a chilling comedy conspiracy thriller about whistleblowers on the run from mortal danger.
Director Maria Schrader’s timely and gripping newsroom drama ‘She Said’ stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as the campaigning reporters who helped bring Harvey Weinstein to justice.
In ‘Pretty Red Dress’, the vibrant debut feature from British writer-director Dionne Edwards, a troubled family of black Londoners learn to express their true selves with a little help from Tina Turner and a fabulous frock.
A nomadic tribe clashes with mysterious monsters in director Andrew Cumming’s gripping, stylistically bold Stone Age survivalist horror thriller ‘The Origin’.
ORIGINALLY REVIEWED OCT. 9, 2021 Stephen Graham gives a raw, red-meat performance as a troubled chef in this sizzling single-shot ensemble drama now on Netflix.
ORIGINALLY REVIEWED OCT. 13, 2021 Kenneth Branagh won the Academy Award for best original screenplay for this warm, funny, visually sumptuous autobiographical drama.
This frequently perplexing sci-fi musical has a lot to say about the politics of race, but its true triumph is its music and gorgeous visuals.
An insightful exploration of youth, ambition, romance, and meaning through the lens of a young woman you both identify with and love to hate.
Originally reviewed Oct. 12, 2021 – NOW ON APPLE TV Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand and a solo Joel Coen turn Shakespeare’s bloodthirsty classic Macbeth into a ravishingly beautiful game of thrones.
Boasting stunning imagery and a great back story, Bhutan’s first film to make the Oscar shortlist works a well-trodden premise into a beautiful, humanist and accessible picture.
George Clooney directs Ben Affleck in The Tender Bar, a warm-hearted but flat coming-of-age drama.
A gloriously extreme Oscar submission, French writer-director Julia Ducournau’s prize-winning erotic thriller about a gender-blurring serial killer with a fetish for sex with cars is funny, fast and furious.
Feted Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest Oscar contender is a classy but underpowered drama about moral complexity and social media shaming.
Cambodia’s Oscar submission is a semi-autobiographical critique of how the country’s rampant capitalism frays the traditional social fabric, told with sympathy yet short on dynamism.
Costa Rica dancer Wendy Chinchilla Araya gives an eerie, riveting perf but it only goes so far in this unstructured tale of magic realism and female power from debuting director Nathalie Alvarez Mesen.
Controversial LA musician Annie Hardy plays an obnoxious American tourist battling demonic forces in the English countryside in director Rob Savage’s profane, provocative, hilarious found-footage horror comedy Dashcam.
The 65th London Film Festival was a welcome return to pre-Covid notions of cinema as communal celebration and politically conscious art form, but a bumpy ride for press and industry professionals.
James Bond star Lashana Lynch joins a large ensemble cast in debbie tucker green’s powerful stage-to-screen drama for the Black Lives Matter era.
Idris Elba, Regina King, Jonathan Majors and LaKeith Stanfield strap on their six-shooters for Jeymes Samuel’s boorishly enjoyable African-American western.
The inability to open oneself to love is the main beast of Bertrand Bonello’s striking and cerebral film that follows a stalled relationship over three time periods, though the message in the central portion doesn’t have the same resonance as the other two.
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Mexican visionary Guillermo Del Toro’s first animated feature is a visually ravishing but dramatically wooden update of much-filmed Italian fairy tale ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’.
Two of Iran’s biggest actors, Taraneh Alidoosti and Navid Mohammadzadeh, play double roles in Mani Haghighi’s chilling, fast-paced thriller with allegorical overtones about life in contemporary Iran.
Featuring a strong ensemble cast including Tom Burke and Jenna Coleman, Neil Maskell’s directing debut ‘Klokkenluider’ is a chilling comedy conspiracy thriller about whistleblowers on the run from mortal danger.
Director Maria Schrader’s timely and gripping newsroom drama ‘She Said’ stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as the campaigning reporters who helped bring Harvey Weinstein to justice.
In ‘Pretty Red Dress’, the vibrant debut feature from British writer-director Dionne Edwards, a troubled family of black Londoners learn to express their true selves with a little help from Tina Turner and a fabulous frock.
A nomadic tribe clashes with mysterious monsters in director Andrew Cumming’s gripping, stylistically bold Stone Age survivalist horror thriller ‘The Origin’.
ORIGINALLY REVIEWED OCT. 9, 2021 Stephen Graham gives a raw, red-meat performance as a troubled chef in this sizzling single-shot ensemble drama now on Netflix.
ORIGINALLY REVIEWED OCT. 13, 2021 Kenneth Branagh won the Academy Award for best original screenplay for this warm, funny, visually sumptuous autobiographical drama.
This frequently perplexing sci-fi musical has a lot to say about the politics of race, but its true triumph is its music and gorgeous visuals.