Polite Society
Nida Manzoor’s POLITE SOCIETY closed Glasgow Film Festival 2023 on a high as one of the festival’s strongest and most creative films.
Category Archives: Reviews
The Artifice Girl
Intelligent filmmaking with soul ought to be treasured when it comes along, and THE ARTIFICE GIRL is just that. What could be inaccessible due to its scientific subject matter or off-putting over the fervour AI discourse provokes is anything but.
Great Yarmouth
GREAT YARMOUTH rushes comeuppance slightly too neatly and swiftly. However, director Marco Martins’ Norfolk retains some of the county’s folk horror sensibilities; the forced propulsion does not preclude its haunting staying power once credits roll.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE is a tense heist thriller about ecoterrorism that doesn’t hold back from clear and explicit recommendations about what property we need to trash to lessen planetary catastrophe.
Therapy Dogs
Ethan Eng’s debut feature THERAPY DOGS is an astonishingly inventive blend of documentary and drama exploring the high school experience.
God’s Creatures
The slow-burning gothic atmosphere may alienate some, but GOD’S CREATURES is a supremely disquieting and gripping drama, handling its themes with great dexterity.
Adopting Audrey
ADOPTING AUDREY’s emotional beats are slight, often landing with less force than they could. However, it still explores something interesting about the generational divide between boomers and millennials.
Past Lives
PAST LIVES – Celine Song’s deeply human film about the pain of missed chances and the hard truths – flows from beat to beat with aching precision and evokes guttural melancholy over and over again.
Girl
Adura Onashile’s GIRL is a gentle and sometimes hypnotic view of a life laced with the after-effects of trauma. The film is an elegantly slow-burning drama, and its willingness to let the visuals and understated performances establish an atmosphere allows the audience to feel Grace and Ama’s emotions all the more keenly.
Femme
FEMME comes with intriguing moral grey areas that make the picture so utterly compelling, despite the broad strokes and cliché from which the narrative framework takes inspiration.