Priscilla
Never meet your heroes, the saying goes. Sofia Coppola’s PRISCILLA would posit that neither should you marry them, have a kid with them, or agree to live in their gilded cage.
Category Archives: Reviews
Poor Things
Leave it to Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek purveyor of oddities, to attempt the supposedly unadaptable POOR THINGS, Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of conflicting points of view, paratextual playfulness, and his trademark commentary on Glaswegian goings-on. The film follows Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter, a woman reanimated after her death with the brain of an unborn baby, … Continue reading Poor Things
Tchaikovsky’s Wife
TCHAIKOVSKY’S WIFE becomes stranger and richer on reflection, and with other quasi-historical biopics having recently made waves, it feels well-timed to enter the canon and reexamine a doomed relationship.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is ugly, prosaic, and dull, pandering to an audience willing to be spoon-fed lines that they once recognised and moves as gracefully as its geriatric lead.
Fallen Leaves
Aki Kaurismäki’s first film since 2017 continues with his trademark mix of deadpan humour and social realism in a clear-eyed take on class politics, mobility, and never succumbing to hopelessness.
Fingernails
Christos Nikou’s second feature doesn’t quite reach memorable comic and painful heights, but does have something to say about modernity’s continual perversion of the human experience and the need to dissect, categorise, and package it. Romance is far from dead, but FINGERNAILS takes a forlorn look at what might kill it.
Is There Anybody Out There?
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE? is a cry for solidarity outside the bounds of what society considers normal. Filmmaker Ella Glendining is as exacting and rigorous with her assumptions as she is in challenging others, encouraging an empathetic reflection as the film’s ending scenes roll.
Anatomy of a Fall
A competent, intriguing drama like this gaining award traction feels more symptomatic of it being the kind of good film that is now a rare occurrence within the film zeitgeist, rather than one that feels like it will be remembered after the award cycle.
Evil Does Not Exist
The title of EVIL DOES NOT EXIST initially implies a sense of virtue, an optimistic hope that the world isn’t as fatally flawed as our experience would make us believe, but Ryusuke Hamaguchi slowly and surely maps out the different layers of the local community that are a microcosm of our larger society.
Foe
FOE feels lethargic rather than slow-burn, a throwback rather than progressive and misjudged in too many key aspects, and its disservice to Ronan and Mescal is unfortunate. It’s left to the audience to determine who the foe of the title might be, but on the evidence presented, the strongest candidate would seem to be the script.