films
Late Shift
It may sound gruelling, but you can’t take your eyes off Benesch - who surely now deserves some comfortable romantic costume drama - for a second.
Stephen Troussé
films
Tornado
The insistence on a very multicultural 18th century saves the film from being one more blood soaked fanboy genre exercise
films
The Ballad of Wallis Island
The most satisfyingly bittersweet British comedy drama since Paddington 2.
films
When the light breaks
When the Light Breaks offers no easy consolation or resolution, but is a simple stark elegy worthy of the music of Jóhann Jóhannsson
films
I'm Still Here
Walter Salles’ first feature in 12 years opens with a sublime Super 8 love letter to the fleeting, precarious beauty of Rio 1970.
films
Bring Them Down
There’s nothing subtle about Bring Them Down, but this is a mightily impressive debut, bringing something of the sanguinary spirit of Sam Peckinpah to the fields of Wicklow.
films
The Fire Inside
It’s never in doubt that Ressa will eventually get her big payday, but The Fire Inside brings fresh power to its familiar beats.
films
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
The film laboriously builds to a dramatically satisfying conclusion, but it’s the handheld footage of teenage girls boldly standing up to revolutionary guards that stays with you.
films
Hard Truths
Pansy seems on the verge of a breakthrough, a realisation that might finally allow her some relief, but Leigh isn’t about to allow us any pat dramatic resolution.
music
Fabulous beasts
It dawned on Marianne Faithfull that she had a far grander destiny. To find the Holy Grail? To write the Modern Prometheus? Or to engineer a shift in western consciousness?
films
The Brutalist
There’s something of Scott Walker’s madly ostentatious Europhilia to the film, his insistence that the pop song could be a church broad enough to welcome Bergman, Stockhausen, Brel and Pasolini.
films
A Complete Unknown
There is lightning in many of the performances, but as a film A Complete Unknown never goes fully electric.