Film

It is amusing to imagine if French director Claire Denis watches many of the American romantic comedies that we know all too well. Whether she does or not, her latest film, Let The Sunshine In, is a clever antidote to the clichés and indulgences that have come to define the genre. The ever reliable Juliette Binoche stars as Isabelle, a divorced artist who is looking for true love for the first time. Her performance is full of nuance and an...

If you had been watching films as they were released in 1993, there must have been a fairly jarring moment when, within days of each other, The Sandlot and This Boy’s Life were released. As we discussed last week, The Sandlot idealises and romanticises growing up in the America of the early 60s. It’s about growing up over a summer, building a group of friends and overcoming some of the common challenges of being a kid. The subject matter of...

French drama Custody (original title Jusqu'à la garde) opens with mother Miriam (Léa Drucker) and father Antoine (Denis Ménochet) arguing over Antoine's rights to see his two children. Initially there is a level of sympathy for Antoine, and an audience can question whether he is being unfairly maligned by a seemingly dislikable mother. I was also reminded of the issues of tit for tat arguments in a family court between parents, with what is the truth being a matter of...

In the couple years since Steven Spielberg professed that the western was dead, we have seen a mini revival in the genre. Whether it is The Hateful Eight, Hell or High Water, or even The Revenant a new generation of filmmakers have connected with this type of film. German director Valeska Grisebach is the latest to reimagine the genre with her third feature. Western is set in a remote rural town in Bulgaria, near the Greek boarder. There, German workers...

Sergey Loznitsa’s latest offering, A Gentle Creature, is an exercise in suffering. A gruelling odyssey that delves the depths of the human spirit, that by the film’s end leaves you coming up gasping for air. Derived from the title of a Dostoevsky short story, Loznitsa’s A Gentle Creature, which competed at last year’s Cannes Film Festival for the much coveted Palme d’Or award, is imbued with the deep pain and suffering of the Russian people. Whilst the narrative of the...

In the same week that Sergio Leone’s classic western A Fistful of Dollars is rereleased, Indonesian director Mouly Surya brings us a subversive reworking the genre and its masculinised tropes. Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts opens on the island of Sumba where Marlina (Marsha Timothy) is mourning the death of her husband. A group of seven men, led by the grey haired Markus (Egy Fedly), arrive at her home intent on raping her and taking her livestock. Before the...

Loosely based on the video game series of the same name and staring the force of nature that is the mighty Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Rampage had all the makings of yet another meat-headed, big, brash and silly disaster movie, so it was a genuine surprise to find out just how much fun this movie has turned out to be. With the recent release of the hugely disappointing sequel to Guillermo de Toro’s Pacific Rim which left more than a...

“I’d rather starve than paint inside the box.” It’s rare that you get a chance to see such an amazing collection of art at the same time as watching a genius work, but last night in the Tate Modern, that happened. Pablo Picasso needs no introduction, his work has been seen, adored and critiqued by the world. But having died in 1973 at the age of 91, how much did we truly know about the man behind the paintbrush, the...

Summer holidays. Six weeks that, when you’re ten or eleven, seem to stretch out endlessly before you. The days are long, there’s no school and often not much to do, so you have to find ways to occupy yourself. For me, that often meant the cinema, or running around in the fields and building dens with my friends and my little brother. For Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry), a recent transplant to a small town, the summer of 1962 means learning...