Film Reviews

A decade on from their first collaboration, director Paul Thomas Anderson and actor Daniel Day-Lewis reunite for another tale driven by strong personalities, power struggles, and personal obsession. Set in 1950s London, Phantom Thread follows Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), a fashion designer who makes clothes for high society and even royalty on occasion; a meticulous craftsman, with a precise routine and method. One day he meets Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps), a waitress at a sea side restaurant, and is instantly...

Pedro Pinho’s first feature film, The Nothing Factory, is a three hour social-realist epic that’s baggier than a pair of nineties jeans and so overly long that dullness eventually turns into despair. The film takes inspiration from the real life story of a group of factory workers who, in a unique case of experimental self-management, took charge of a lift building factory in Portugal. When the workers of said factory discover machinery being sneaked off premises late one night, panic...

For those who love film, Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya’s documentary, The Cinema Travellers, will find a special place in your heart. Through the lives of three men, who are bound by celluloid, the beauty of film, and its projection, we are provided an intimate, fly on the wall look at travelling cinemas in the rural parts of India’s Maharashtra state. There is the shrewd businessman, exhibiting films at many of India’s religious festivals, the charitable showman who screens films...

Richard Linklater’s latest film is a sequel, of sorts, to Hal Ashby’s 1971 great, The Last Detail, which starred a young Jack Nicholson. That film was concerned with questions around the ideas of legacy & impermanence, and Last Flag Flying continues this tradition, whilst also being shot through with a hit of pure Linklater in the form of a hangout film. Ashby’s film centres on two US sailors transporting a third to a military prison and Linklater’s film shares a...

After beginning with The Hunger Games in 2012, the tenth and (*prayers*) final film amongst the teens facing dystopian peril YA subgenre belongs to Maze Runner: The Death Cure. The Maze Runner films have always sat somewhere in the middle, never enjoying the cultural capital of The Hunger Games franchise, nor the career destroying banality of the Divergent trilogy. 20th Century Fox have also had the decency to adapt the third book in James Dashner's trilogy into one final film...

If you have ever wondered what Wallace & Gromit’s ancestors would have looked like then the latest feature from the much loved Aardman Animation Studio will have you catered for. Set on prehistoric earth, somewhere near Manchester, Early Man follows a rabbit hunting tribe and its inquisitive and likable member Dug (Eddie Redmayne). They live in a green and luscious crater on what is an otherwise barren planet. One day, their idyllic lives are ruined as the more developed Bronze...

A curious oddity in more ways than one, Downsizing heralds writer/director Alexander Payne’s return to original storytelling, his script here being the first since his debut feature, Citizen Ruth, to not be adapted from a novel. Like Ruth, Downsizing is a gutsy contemplation of American society, but one that’s unlikely to inspire the sort of profound musings that are prominent in his more perceptive works: it isn’t as eccentric as Election or Sideways, nor as sharp as Nebraska & About...

My Life Story, directed by Julien Temple, is a soaring success.  It is the filmed stage show of Graham “Suggs” McPherson, frontman for the iconic 80s’ Ska-Pop band, Madness. Coming in the form of a one man show that expertly blends archival footage, animation and dramatized re-enactment, the show is an autobiographical account of Suggs’ life story structured loosely around his quest to discover more about the father he never had. It is a personal, sprawling spoken word documentary that...

There was a time when the release of a new Pixar film was looked upon by critics and consumers alike as something of a cultural event. But recent years have proved there to be major chinks in the animation powerhouse’s creative armour; the shameless merchandising of the Cars franchise; the growing dependence on sub-par sequels to fill the slate; the ever-greater reliance on a specific series of narrative & thematic tropes. Though their output remains consistently entertaining, the heartfelt intellect...