REVIEW: Nomadland [LFF 2020]

In a year that for most people has been largely defined by not leaving the house, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland is a paean to wide, open spaces.

Based on Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction novel, we follow Fern (Frances McDormand). Uprooted by the 2008 recession – the film opens in 2011 – and by the death of her husband, Fern has hit the road in her camper van; seeking out seasonal employment along along the West Coast.…

REVIEW: After Love [LFF 2020]

What do you do when the person you love isn’t whom you thought?

Mary Hussain (Joanna Scanlan) is a devoted wife and practising Muslim. She and Ahmed (Nasser Memarzia) have been together since their teens. They live in Dover, where Ahmed works as a ferry captain.…

REVIEW: Another Round (Druk) [LFF 2020]

© StudioCanal

Writer-director Thomas Vinterberg reteams with The Hunt star Mads Mikkelsen for Another Round, a boozy reflection on middle-aged boredom and ennui.

Martin (Mikkelsen) is not a fulfilled man.

History teacher at an elite high-school, he is perhaps best described, in the cautious words of one student, as “diffident”.…

REVIEW: One Night in Miami [LFF 2020]

Miami. February 25th, 1964.

22-year-old Cassius Clay defeats Sonny Liston in the Boxing World Heavyweight Championship and is crowned champion. That night, he retires to the Hampton House to celebrate with a few friends – NFL player Jim Brown, soul singer Sam Cooke, and civil-rights activist Malcolm X.…

REVIEW: Wildfire [LFF 2020]

Wildfire is a film that warns about the impact of unresolved violence.

After years of living hand-to-mouth, under-the-radar, Kelly (the late Nika McGuigan) is going home. Home for Kelly means a small town on the Irish border. The Troubles may have ended, but the wounds have never fully healed – at all, it seems, for Kelly.…

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.…

REVIEW: Mangrove [LFF 2020]

In what has become something of an LFF tradition, Steve McQueen’s latest gets the festival off to a strong, socially-aware start.

It’s 1968 and things are changing in west London. Kids play beneath a towering overpass under construction and in Notting Hill a new restaurant, the Mangrove, provides a hub for the West Indian community.…

REVIEW: A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood [LFF 2019]

With Operation Yewtree looming large over once-idyllic childhood viewing, in the minds of the British public the last few years have altered what it means to be a beloved children’s entertainer.

As such, it’s understandable that UK audiences might not be entirely comfortable with the notion of Mr.…

REVIEW: The Lighthouse [LFF 2019]

As in his 2015 directorial debut The Witch, Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse grapples with the theme of spiritual annihilation, though in a way that’s altogether wetter, wilder, and weirder.

Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe star as two wickies, or lighthouse keepers, cut off on a crag of brine-blasted, inhospitable rock far from the mainland.If…