Effi (Leisa Gwenllian) is a person and Blaenau Ffestiniog is the name of the village where she lives. In Welsh – everyone’s first language in this wonderful little film – the title therefore means “Effi from Blaenau.” (It’s pronounced Blay-nah.) It is an adaption of a one-woman play by Gary …
It’s been a while since such a well-mounted cast failed to meet the moment in an ensemble comedy quite like Jonah Hill’s Outcome, the actor’s sophomore outing into fiction filmmaking after his breakout directorial debut, Mid90s. That movie was (very) well received. This one will get the polar opposite reaction. …
It’s so nice to see something uniting the entire world, especially when that thing is a hatred for artificial intelligence. Per Aspera Ad Astra is a Chinese kids’ movie, released for the lunar new year, with some very big Chinese stars at its core, all about the importance of our …
The instructions are simple: Do not overlook any anomalies. If you find an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you do not find any anomalies, do not turn back. Go out from Exit 8. The instructions hang on the wall, where all who enter the switchback tunnels of this particular subway …
Who’d be young? With your whole life ahead of you and no sense of who you’re truly are, you live in anticipation of a brilliant future that will obviously come to pass somehow. On the other hand, who’d be old? Either you had your chance and it didn’t work out, …
The main takeaway from Skiff is that it is an unusually kind portrait of a family. It’s a picture of the time when the children are in their late teens and can largely take care of themselves. They have jobs, can transport themselves around town, and will shortly be leaving …
A very pretty singer and an extremely handsome actor best known for television star in a romcom directed by someone with a solid career in light entertainment. There is some concern expressed as to whether the movie could be a success because the director is a woman and the stars …
Since Seized showed at the Sundance Film Festival, news has dropped about the dismantling of the Washington Post by its billionaire owner. The ability of a free and fair press to hold power to account is something that it seems the seat of American government is about to lose, probably …
It’s been a while since a movie has been so good at textures, both visual and aural. In Satisfaction you get an extremely clear sense of the sensations the characters are experiencing and the world through which they are moving. The plot in itself is much less pleasant, as it’s …
On paper Low Rider sounds like fun: a grieving Londoner goes on a road trip across South Africa in order to connect with her father. Unfortunately Low Rider manages to take this solid concept and make it as dull and cliched as possible. People don’t talk with each other, but …
A lot of people are missing the point of The Bride! because they don’t want to consider the price paid for our entertainment. This is possibly because, in service to its original concept, this barnstorming horror movie contains only two original ideas not directly lifted from other films. The first …
The Mexican director Nicolás Pereda has proven himself as one of the most prominent filmmakers of the new generation. In the last three years, he released three films. Lázaro de Noche premiered at the 2024 FIDMarseille, and Cobre was also a world premiere at the French experimental film event in …
The King’s Warden was released in February 2026 and has already become one of the most successful movies in Korean history. That’s possibly because it tells a story already known to most Korean schoolchildren, like how American kids know about George Washington and the cherry tree. A boy king in …
It’s 2014 and Nadia (Monia Chokri) and Céline (Ella Rumpf) were recently legally able to get married in France. Hooray! And anyone who’s ever heard a playground chant knows what comes after love and marriage. Nadia is pregnant thanks to IVF and a Danish sperm donor, but Céline will have …
To paraphrase a great actor, we need art. We live in a world where everything is increasingly financialized, and things are often valued only by what they can return to our pockets, but this fixation on the monetary ignores the richness of our souls and hinders our processing of difficult …
It makes no sense when a movie spoils itself through its own marketing. The central relationship in Washed Up has a twist that you probably haven’t been able to avoid! This is a giant mistake, because most of the humour and a great deal of the charm comes in how …
If you think Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo’s aesthetics will get more refined after his films have, over the years, preferred a more digitized (read: pixelated, desaturated, out-of-focus) aesthetic, think again! His latest film, within a corpus of slow cinema experiments, What Does That Nature Say to You, contains many of …
Someday a movie in which a group of teenagers throw a mock funeral for a hamster, complete with stone-faced pallbearers carrying a small coffin past hordes of wailing kids dressed up to the nines, will deserve a bad review, but today is not that day. Black Burns Fast has an …
Grace Glowicki’s Dead Lover arrives as Frankenstein tales are having a real cultural moment. With Guillermo del Toro’s film released last autumn (and picking up three Oscars) and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride currently in cinemas, Glowicki’s picture as director, co-writer (with Ben Petrie, who also stars) and star may not …
A clip has recently done the rounds of British social media of a well-known pundit asking a woman who she plans to vote for in an upcoming election. The woman says she doesn’t know, but she certainly won’t be voting for a particular candidate who she recently saw leaving a …