FEATURE: My 2020 in Cinema

PSA: Unlike with this year’s roundup on the Movie Robcast, I’ve decided not to include any films that were eligible for the previous Oscars; even if they were only released in the UK in 2020.

That means no Parasite for Best Picture, or Céline Sciamma for Best Director (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), no Scarlett Johansson for Best Supporting Actress (Jojo Rabbit), or Roger Deakins for Best Cinematography (1917).

REVIEW: Shirley [LFF 2020]


After 2018’s disassociative coming-of-age story Madeline’s Madeline, Josephine Decker returns with another twist on a conventional narrative – the biopic as psychological thriller.

We first see our subject in soft focus, extreme close-up: bare skin, tangled hair, the hint of a face.…

PODCAST: The Invisible Man (2019) [The Movie RobCast]

Episode 84 of The Movie Robcast casts an eye over the latest telling of The Invisible Man. From the Blumhouse stable and directed by Upgrade creator Leigh Whannell, it boasts Elisabeth Moss in the lead role as an abused woman who fears her ex may be closer than she realises.…

High-Rise is the cinema of concrete and chaos

 

There’s something about the technology-driven dystopias of JG Ballard that appeal to a certain breed of director.

Steven Spielberg’s mainstream adaptation of Empire of the Sun is ironically something of an oddity of an oeuvre encapsulated by the steely paraphilia of David Cronenberg’s Crash.…

Truth misses the point somewhat

 

“Are you now or have you ever been a liberal?”

This line that has appeared in two films this London Film Festival — the first being Trumbo, a biopic of the avowed leftie screenwriter who helped to bring down the blacklist.…