Tag: LFF

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…

REVIEW: The Personal History Of David Copperfield [LFF 2019]

As suggested by his use of its full title, Armando Iannucci is clearly a man who knows and loves his Dickens.

That might be surprising given the cynical, politically-driven worldview Iannucci is known for versus Dickens’ warm, colourful humanism, but the social issues of the Victorian era are very much in evidence today.…

REVIEW: Colour Out Of Space [LFF 2019]

Colour Out Of Space, Richard Stanley’s first film since being fired from 1996’s The Island Of Doctor Moreau, loses itself in what is, essentially, the colour of the inside of your eyelids.

The pink glow in question comes from a mysterious meteorite, which crashes down on the front lawn of the Gardner family, a bunch of city-dwellers recently escaped to rural Massachusetts.…

REVIEW: Bad Education [LFF 2019]

It may share its name with a Jack Whitehall classroom sitcom and its 2015 big screen spin-off, but Bad Education (sans the “The Movie” subtitle) is all the more troubling in the fact that it’s based on a real-life incident.

When Deputy Superintendent Pam Gluckin (a leonine Allison Janney) is found to have embezzled funds from the Roslyn school district, Superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman, clean as a freshly-plucked chicken) makes the case against the calling police.…

REVIEW: The Peanut Butter Falcon [LFF 2019]

By Rob Daniel

 

 

A contender for 2019’s best crowd-pleaser, The Peanut Butter Falcon is a celebration of friendship and adventure. A joyous movie leaving you with an aching face after ninety-minutes of smiling.

Alongside the delight is an admiration for the skill with which writer/directors Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz (under the banner Lucky Treehouse) put their movie together.…

REVIEW: Waiting For The Barbarians [LFF 2019]

Ciro Guerra’s Waiting For The Barbarians is a finely tempered adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s elegantly allegorical novel about the brutal, self-defeating ironies of colonial oppression.

The Magistrate (Mark Rylance) is, despite his grand title, an administrator, whose unobtrusive care-takingof a small nameless settlement on the frontier of The Empire gives plenty of time for pastimes.…