REVIEW: The Harder They Fall (London Film Festival 2021)

The opening gala of this year’s London Film Festival, The Harder They Fall is a classic Spaghetti Western with a few incendiary extra ingredients: all-star cast, stylised violence, pounding bass.

The feature debut of writer-director Jeymes Samuel, the film recasts historical figures from the Old West as combatants in a bloody, stylised tale of revenge.…

PODCAST: London Film Festival 2021 Preview [Movie RobCast]

Episode 126 of The Movie Robcast previews this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Back in cinemas after a largely digital outing in 2020 for obvious reasons, the festival this year offers its typically vast range of movies (and TV series) from around the globe.…

PODCAST: London Film Festival 2020 Wrap-Up & Review [Movie RobCast]


In episode 102 of The Movie Robcast Robs Daniel & Wallis look back at the films they saw at the 64th London Film Festival.

The viewing may have been primarily via the Press website, but the festival still delivered its usual array of astounding movies.…

REVIEW: Ammonite [LFF 2020]

Francis Lee’s Ammonite plays like a gender-swapped God’s Own Country cast back in time to the mid-19th Century.

Instead of the rolling hills of Yorkshire, the film gives us the raging sea around Lyme Regis. And rather than a nervy fictional farmworker, we have real-life palaeontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet).…

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.…