Is it ethical to pay to see a Johnny Depp film?
It’s a question I found myself considering after attending a preview screening of Ebenezer, having just paid to see a Johnny Depp film. Not exactly the moral high ground.…
Tag: literary adaptation
REVIEW: In the Hand of Dante [Netflix]
![REVIEW: In the Hand of Dante [Netflix]](http://ofallthefilmsites.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/in_the_hand_of_dante.H.2025-1.jpg.webp-1.jpg)
Dante begins The Divine Comedy lost in a dark wood. Julian Schnabel’s In the Hand of Dante invites us to follow him there.
Adapted from Nick Tosches’ notoriously unfilmable novel, Schnabel’s first feature since At Eternity’s Gate is part literary mystery, part gangster thriller, part historical epic, part theological meditation.…
REVIEW: The Get Out (2026)
Russell Crowe tries to leave an overcrowded party.
Formerly titled Bear Country, Derrick Borte’s The Get Out arrives with a premise that sounds deceptively simple: a nightclub owner decides he has had enough and decides to get out of the business.…
The Girl With All The Gifts has excellence in its DNA
The Young Adult movie has been infected by the zombie genre. The result revitalizes them both.
Based on the novel by M.R. Carey, The Girl With All The Gifts follows Melanie (newcomer Sennia Nanua), a gifted girl who also happens to be possessed with a ravening hunger for flesh.…
Steve Spielberg’s The BFG is a mid-sized disappointment
When perhaps the greatest living filmmaker takes on the favorite story of one of the most belovec children’s authors of the 20th Century, you hope for a truly magic adventure. Instead Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG is charming but slight.
…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.…
Remainder is an open-ended tale of obsession and recreation
A pale, distracted young man (Tom Sturridge) limps across a busy road, leaving a wheelie case behind him.
No sooner has he crossed, however, than there’s a shower of glass from a nearby skyscraper. A moment later he’s creamed by a plummeting mass of wires and plastic — his blood pools around him.…
Sunset Song is a lyrical but transitory ode to Scotland
The first impression you are likely to get Sunset Song, a long-awaited adaptation of the Lewis Grassic Gibson novel, is one of absolute lyricism.
Terrence Davies’ camera drifts circuitously over pale stalks of grain, which darken almost imperceptibly, perhaps as a cloud passes overhead.…
More coming-of-age dramas should take a page from Diary of a Teenage Girl
Is there any story more immediately relatable than the coming-of-age?
After all, we’ve all grown up; all felt, to one extent or another, the confusion of feeling yourself changing, of becoming someone new. While Boyhood, for instance, documents the scope and detail of twelve whole years of maturation, Diary of a Teenage Girl focuses on the awakening of its protagonist’s sexuality over the course of a few key months.…
Mr. Holmes puts the “To bee” in the legendary detective’s last gasp
Based on Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind, the title of this adaptation suggests its immediate desire for respectability.
After all Mr. Holmes was part financed by BBC Films and stars no less august a figure than Sir Ian McKellen.…