It might be necessary to have a certain kind of family to truly appreciate this kind of disaster movie. If you know someone – your sister-in-law, perhaps? Or your least favourite cousin? – whose reaction on learning another relative will not be attending Christmas dinner is “How dare that bitch …
The self-indulgence of Hombre al Agua (which translates to “Man Overboard”) is kind of its point, for it’s about the ways people play parts in their lives and how privilege allows the privileged to change the terms of the act. Fortunately a movie in which the writer-director-coproducer also stars as …
A family is a fragile thing too often taken for granted, and once the love is gone it’s very hard to bring back. A Common Story has an unusual gimmick: it is about a family, but the child hardly features. For she has grown up and gone off to university, …
Sometimes it feels like modern technology has given us the worst of both worlds. We have the capacity to be constantly connected with our loved ones no matter where in the world we may be. This can provide the illusion that we are in the same place as those we …
So this is how the world ends: not with a bang, but with a bunch of French politicians arguing with each other in a meeting room. As France grapples with the new world order, where America is no longer an ally and Russia is very much worse, its art has …
Quentin Dupieux is not only an electronic musician (who earned a UK number one back in 1999) but also the finest surrealist filmmaker of our times. To say his movies are unpredictable, illogical, ridiculous and violent is an understatement. But their wildness and their misbehaviour has the feel of ordinary …
It was notable at this year’s Cannes how many movies re-examined France and the Second World War. It’s been obvious for some years now how the French film industry has been retelling its own stories and creating blockbusters for home audiences without caring too much about how they’ll land overseas. …
Tin Castle aka Irish Travellers is the very rare documentary worth seeing for its cinematography. Unfortunately the cinematography is the best thing about the film. Director Alexander Murphy also shot the film and some of its images are among the most surprisingly beautiful that have ever been captured in a …
For a movie about the limits of memory, Blue Heron made the bad decision to be from the point of the youngest family member. That’s to say, the person present with the most limited understanding of what was happening while it was happening. The fact that the young daughter, Sasha …
Dollars to donuts director Rodrigo Sorogoyen was not happy to learn about Sentimental Value. Its brief outline is the same to that of The Beloved – volatile director tries to reconnect with his daughter by working with her on a movie – but of course Sentimental Value came out last …
The most shocking thing in Parallel Tales is Isabelle Huppert lighting a cigarette with a toaster. There’s a sense of unpredictability in that one moment that the rest of Parallel Tales was aiming for and somehow didn’t achieve. It’s hard to say why it falls so flat, since there is …
Alicia Vikander has had an impressive year of making extremely interesting choices but, with the noble exception of Hope, unfortunately those choices have not worked out. Some of that is because of the difficulty of the topics, but in the case of The Echo Chamber it’s because of its frightful …
When a documentary film is about a filmmaker and their own family, there is really no way to critique the work of art without critiquing the people in it. That caveat, or concern, is especially important for Remake, the new documentary by Ross McElwee, who single-handedly changed the world of …
In the UK Sense and Sensibility has a U rating – suitable for all – which is the equivalent of an American G rating. For a movie about the romantic choices of two adult sisters this is an incredible achievement, even if it’s an adaption of a Jane Austen novel. …
There was an unusual preoccupation with performance art at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Perhaps this is because performance art is by definition tied to a specific place, people and moment, providing an experience that can never be replicated. On the other hand, in a world where all our moments …
Emmanuel Marre won the Best Screenplay Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for A Man of His Time aka Notre Salut, because it does the impossible: it is a comedy about the slide into fascism. But the film is clearly of personal as well as professional importance to Mr. …
The end credits confirm genAI was used for parts of Titanic Ocean. This is a disgraceful choice by writer-director Konstantina Kotzamani because it insults all the hard work of her cast and crews. This is especially unforgivable because the young actresses had to do a large amount of underwater work …
French family film Words of Love aka Quelques Mots d’Amour is about a tough but ordinary topic: how a child comes to terms with the fact the family they have is not the family they want. It features a single professional actor, Hafsia Herzi, as Erika the mother. All the others …
The Difficult Bride is rare on two counts: it is a Bangladeshi film, and its director, Rubaiyat Hossain, is a woman. It is rarer still for being both incredibly supportive and furiously critical of its heroine, who is also both a traditional woman (getting married very young) and a modern …
You don’t realise how tough it is to make a good documentary until you see ones which fall short. For a documentary to succeed, it needs to back up its assertions in ways which will stand up in court, access to the people who will give you that backup, and …