Sarah Manvel 
The problem with The Problem with People is that it is so determined to be light-hearted in how it deals with an unpleasant aspect of human nature – our talent for conflict – that it is neither realistic enough nor cheerful enough. It works very hard both to provide enough …
While it is to be praised that so many dads are making movies for children these days, it does rather mean the dads are centering themselves in the movies, instead of the children for whom the movies are supposedly made. This is very frustrating, not least when it’s clear that …
It’s always wonderful to see an actor rise to the opportunity and become a great movie star, and there’s a moment late in Gladiator II where the switch visibly flips for Paul Mescal. He (and Daisy Edgar-Jones, who I have written about elsewhere) came out of nowhere in 2020’s lockdown …
A good story is about people with a problem and their attempts to solve it. Sometimes the problems are large – aliens are attacking! – and sometimes they are smaller. In Sofa, So Good, the problem is how to get a cheap sofa across town when you don’t have a …
There are few subjects more emotive than motherhood, but a story about a new way to enable motherhood/parenthood should not have taken why that is as granted. On stage before the world premiere of Joy at the London Film Festival, director Ben Taylor and star James Norton both spoke about the …
Animation is often seen as a genre for children, but that is because it is a genre for imagination. It’s a way of visually expressing stories that cannot be realistically or safely acted out. The stop-motion Memoir of a Snail, which has surprisingly won Best Film at this year’s London …
This Telugu-language movie was guaranteed major international distribution once N. T. Rama Rao Jr. agreed to star. After all, he was half of the leading duo in RRR, the Indian movie which so dramatically punched through to an international audience. Yet Devara Part 1 is not designed for an international …
It’s depressing to realize someone is coasting on their reputation instead of using their talent, and in fact making so little use of their talent that their reputation becomes suspect. This is the sorry state of affairs after seeing The Room Next Door, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, that …
This 3 ½ hour long tale, complete with intermission, of a Jewish-Hungarian architect attempting to make his way in America after the second world war is what Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis wishes it had been. It is about human dignity in the face of incredible suffering, and the ways in …
Happy Holidays is possibly as apolitical as a Palestinian movie can get, which is to say not very. Writer-editor-director Scandar Copti, who won the Orrozonti prize for best screenplay at this year’s Venice Biennale, worked with non-professional actors in an non-linear fashion to depict a very bad few months in …
They live in Metz, a city in northeastern France close to the borders with both Germany and Luxembourg. Both sons, who are in their very early twenties, cheerfully live at home. The older Fus (Benjamin Voisin) studied to be a welder but has been unable to find paying work so …
Writer-director Francesca Comencini apparently decided that her entire audience for The Time It Takes would be people who already knew that she is the daughter of the late Italian film director Luigi Comencini. This was so obvious to her that neither the father (played by Fabrizio Gifuni) nor the daughter …
What you have to realize about Queer is that it is an adaptation of a book by William S. Burroughs, so the queerness on display here is less about sexuality, but more a way of looking at the world. William Lee, largely Lee to his friends (an astonishing Daniel Craig), …
The most anticipated film of the Venice Biennale this year was the epic Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, which landed with something of a whimper instead of the bang it truly deserves. Kevin Costner’s project, the first part of which had its world premiere in Cannes this past …
There is a disturbing edge to Yudhra that is only slightly explained by the plot. It is clear from how action director Federico Cueva, cinematographer Jay Oza and director Ravi Udyawar staged and filmed the brutal fight scenes that they really enjoyed going so hard. The (superb) night-time gunfight on …
This movie contains an entire wedding party being taken hostage, but the violence within Kahan Shuru Kahan Khatam is largely cartoonish and unthreatening. At one point, heavily armed henchmen break into a house and are easily trounced by a group of middle-aged women armed only with heavy sticks. Let’s repeat …
The empty nest is notoriously difficult for parents to deal with, but My Everything (Mon Inséparable) has taken a fresh angle to this ordinary dilemma: the adult son who’s ready to flee the coop has an intellectual disability. Joël (Charles Peccia Galletto) is in his late twenties/early thirties and lives …
The performances in He Ain’t Heavy are so emotional that it takes a while to notice the movie is essentially a three-hander, between Jade (Leila George), her little brother Max (Sam Corlett), and their mother Bev (Greta Scacchi, Ms. George’s real-life mother). They live in Perth in western Australia and …
Though no one has ever said so explicitly, The Mallorca Files was clearly designed to remind the British of the benefits of a close relationship with Europe. The show is filmed in a Spain where everyone speaks fluent English, with one British and one German lead actor, and a supporting …
A career woman finds herself unexpectedly pregnant? Snore. Without knowing who the dad is? Seen it. But pregnant with twins, by each of her suitors? Outstanding. Without hyperbole, this is the greatest concept for a romantic comedy in the history of time. Bad Newz then surpasses the excellence of its …