REVIEW: Foe [London Film Festival 2023]

There is perhaps no genre as primed for grand explorations of the human condition as science fiction.

Not constrained by the limits of the world as it is, it’s free to pose questions and imagine scenarios by which we might better understand ourselves.…

REVIEW: Three Thousand Years of Longing

In his first film since 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller reminds us why he truly deserves the accolade of “visionary”.

By any standard, Three Thousand Years of Longing is an audacious change of pace from the filmmaker who filmography is largely defined by scorched wastelands populated by monstrous motorheads.…

The Lobster is a blackly heartfelt chimera of a romcom

 

You wait for one comedy about men being transformed into animals then two come along at once — a non-mating pair, if you will.

But where Kevin Smith’s Tusk was about a vicious comic forcibly losing his humanity due to a mad experiment, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster is altogether more social and universal.…

Les combattants (Love at First Fight) is a romcom at war with itself

 

All’s fair in love and war, as the saying goes, and in Les combattants (AKA Love at First Fight) those two things aren’t so far apart.

The directorial debut of Thomas Cailley — he also shares writing duties with Claude Le Pape — this French-language film is a romcom but only in the most superficial of terms.…

Before Midnight is a flawless deliberation on what happens when romantic love becomes real work

 

As I commented in my recent review of Stuck In Love, I’m not what you would call a fan of romantic movies.

Regardless of the suffix (romcom, romdram, rom sci-fi), the tropes of filmic love – eyes meeting across a crowded room, the initial dislike, the banter, repartee, the eventual kiss – do nothing for me.…

Stuck in Love is a romcom-dram-thing that’s well worth a look

Before I start this review, I’ll provide a disclaimer: I don’t usually watch romantic films.

It’s not like a badge of pride with me or anything, but it’s just not a plot feature I’m particularly interested in paying to see (and in this case, I didn’t).