Sarah Manvel 
Someday a movie featuring an argument about Predator vs Hobbit fanfiction will deserve a negative review, but today is not that day. The Incomer is completely deranged (complimentary), and its derangement is entirely character-based, giving the actors the freedom to go as wild as possible, which they did. It’s a …
Independent Nigerian cinema is so rare that it’s automatically worth a look, but nothing gets a pass based on its cultural background alone. Whether a story is set in Liverpool, Los Angeles or Lagos it needs to be viewed within the same critical framework, and if a concept is offensive …
Hot Water pulls off a very neat trick in the guise of a road movie: it makes thought process form. The act of driving thousands of miles is what provides the mother and son at the heart of this story huge catharsis without a great deal of big stuff happening. …
The concept behind Given Names (Prénoms) is so simple that it’s hard to believe no one has ever done it before. Filmmaker Nurith Aviv showed up at the apartments of various friends of hers with a bunch of flowers, and then listened to the friend talk about their first, or …
The concept of Run Amok is alarmingly close to bad taste. The execution of the concept of Run Amok also requires all the adults here to be really bad at adulting, which is unlikely. But if you can get past both of those things – a pretty large if – …
The end credits of The Musical contain this dedication: “To all our theater teachers, who taught us the power of spite.” If you just didn’t let out a bark of laughter or maybe twist your mouth in a wry grin of acknowledgement, you will have a very hard time enjoying …
Actors Will Poulter and Noah Centineo, who both also helped produce Union County, undoubtedly personally enabled this cinema-verité story of rural American drug addiction to get made. Large parts of Union County were filmed in a real drug court with the court’s workers and the court’s service users playing all …
During the Berlinale I swung by photography museum C|O Berlin to look at their exhibit of work by Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide (running until June 2026, and recommended). Her most famous photograph, “Mujer Ángel, Sonoran Desert, 1979,” shows an indigenous woman in traditional dress on the side of a hill, …
“Cozy murder” is a thing because it’s an easy way for our society to reassure itself that justice will be done. What’s more, we all fear the reaper, and working out how to manage our inevitable end is one of the most important things we do, individually and collectively. This …
It’s fascinating to see how many cultures in all different parts of the world come to the same conclusion for all their different problems: it’s a woman to blame. The first movie from Chad to ever play the Berlinale, Soumsoum, The Night of the Stars is a fascinating picture of …
Life rarely works out the way you want, whether or not you get what you want. The Christophers uses the art of painting as its metaphor for how people come to terms with what life has given them, and also what they do about it. It’s set entirely within London’s …
First we must congratulate Laura Caselli, the casting director for Two Pianos, for realising the male movie star currently working in France whose vibe best matches Charlotte Rampling’s is François Civil. He has a tendency to play hotheaded romantic heroes and recently carried the two-part adaption of The Three Musketeers …
I am a sucker for movies which involve the leads wandering around a city at night instead of sleeping together. The trouble that the concept is easy but making it interesting is tough. The leads must be personable enough and the obstacles in their way must be intriguing enough that …
The first The Devil Wears Prada, based on a novel published in 2003, was released in 2006. It was the usual coming of age story in what remains a very unusual context for women: the world of work. An aspiring journalist named Andy (Anne Hathaway) became the second assistant to …
The greatest thing about film festivals is the room they provide for experimental work from anywhere in the world to catch a wider audience. The complex set-up of Dao is significantly tougher to explain than it is to watch, but it’s exceptional at capturing a large and complex family’s life …
There’s a myth that knowing your death approaches brings out the best in you. In these circumstances you will simply rise above the horror of your looming demise to love your family, be kind to your neighbours, save kittens from trees and generally be all excellent until you perish. Anyone …
Not since 2012’s Oscar-nominated Belgian bluegrass film The Broken Circle Breakdown has a European movie been so in love with Americana. There is a significant though dwindling group of Europeans for whom the American dream has always been the ideal fantasy. For these people the most definite way to express …
When the world is a smorgasbord of tastes and sensations you can’t blame someone for wanting to sample it all, but at a certain point you’ve got to admit you know what you prefer. The gimmick of the novel Allegro Pastell is a very good one: it’s the text and …
A true Europudding includes plenty of gratuitous nudity and loads of sex, but those are the only things missing from the supremely ridiculous The Blood Countess. This movie is not good, but it is such a stupidly fun good time that you should see it anyway. It is always a …
The central couple at the heart of this complex Pakistani movie have known each other from around the village since childhood. They are thrown together because everyone else considers them damaged goods. The way they deal with their damage, separately and together, enables an unusual depiction of the power struggles …