There are few institutions in this world that are more heavily regarded and reviled in equal measure than the Catholic church. From the sects of religious devotees that populate social pockets of the world to their portrayal in modern media that places them in the spotlight for heinous acts of …
Universal Language, the latest from Canadian director Matthew Rankin, follows Abdolreza Kahani’s A Shrine as another delightful Iranian-Canadian comedy hitting the 2024 international film festival circuit – a welcome trend, judging by the quality of these two excellent films. Written by Ila Firouzabadi, Pirouz Nemati, and Rankin, a vignette structure …
It’s all too easy to get swept up in the exaggerated hype surrounding a highly anticipated blockbuster, especially these days when initial reactions to such films often take on a clickbait tone and are packed with buzzwords studios love to plaster on posters, trailers, and more. Directed by Jon M. …
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 …
I’m not a religious or faith-driven person. In both my personal and professional life, I rely on science, logic, and reason to justify what needs justification, but when it comes to cinema and television, everything fascinates me. Consequently, a mystery-thriller centered on the election of a new Pope after the …
The theme of “artificial intelligence,” particularly in cinema and television, has been one of the most intense, controversial debates in recent years. As with most polarizing topics, opinions tend to be extreme and lack depth, creating opposing views of “AI is good” versus “AI is bad,” as if all uses …
I repeat what I mentioned just a few days ago: there are hundreds of new film releases every year, so it’s only natural that some movies – and their filmmakers – unfortunately slip through the cracks. Andrea Arnold (American Honey) has consistently found success at the Cannes Film Festival, winning …
For every hundred films watched, another hundred slip through the cracks. That said, it’s rare to miss the same director or screenwriter multiple times, yet that’s exactly what happened with John Crowley (Brooklyn) and Nick Payne (The Last Letter from Your Lover) over the years, making We Live in Time …
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 …
What do you believe in? It seems like a simple enough question to answer; however, when you begin to break it down, there are many ways to interpret it. What beliefs are we talking about? Religion, perhaps? Are we talking about which God we pray to and what religious standards …
The manic pixie dream girl trope, where an eccentric young woman exists solely to expand and incite growth in a male protagonist, is criticised widely for lacking dimensional fortitude. Yet it continues to be utilised as a narrative framework, and too often without insight into the girl at the heart …
Revenge of the Sith is the best of the Star Wars prequel trilogy by a country mile. Where The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones felt narratively meandering, handicapped by their insistence on telling over showing, Revenge of the Sith takes much better advantage of writer-director George Lucas’s idiosyncrasies. …
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 …
If my review for The Phantom Menace could be perceived as me going out of my way to be fair, then Attack of the Clones is me reaping what I’ve sowed. Not only does this film suffer from many of the same issues as its predecessor, but it amplifies them …
Halloween is right around the corner and so is everybody’s favorite unkillable slasher, Michael Myers. He may not have the in-depth lore of the Jigsaw Killer or the quippy one-liners of Freddy Kruger, but Michael Myers has remained one of the defining figures of horror across thirteen movies. Well, technically …
What is there to say about Sony’s Spider-Man Universe? A franchise that once ruled the world has now become a mixed bag of incredible highs and abysmal lows. On one hand, we have films like Across the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: No Way Home, which joined the ranks of the original …
The Dahomey kingdom was in the West African region from 1600 to 1904. It is now the Republic of Benin, which borders Nigeria and Togo. During the second Franco-Dahomean war in 1892, the French colonizers stole dozens of artifacts, which were decades later placed in museums in France. In the …
The need to feel a sense of belonging is something that everyone experiences to some degree most of their life. But there is no time in which that need is higher than during adolescence. The dual need to carve out your own path while not becoming too much of an outsider is …
From the moment the programme for the London Film Festival was announced, Nickel Boys quickly became one of my most anticipated films of the entire festival. Not only did the film receive positive reviews after its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival at the end of August, but its …
Steven McQueen’s latest film, Blitz, marks the director’s return to fiction, after focusing on documentary filmmaking in 2023. Naturally, this comes with a lot of excitement for fans of the director as well as for fans of the historical drama genre. With its period setting and focus on the Second …