The Semaine de la Critique (Critics Week) is a crucial sidebar at the Festival de Cannes. It focuses on debut and sophomore films. A Useful Ghost (Pee Chai Dai Ka) by the Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke is another hyped first-time directorial effort. The semaine is responsible for unveiling buzzy titles …
BBY 1 is here. Concluding Andor’s second season with the events of Rogue One imminent was always going to happen, but it takes an explosive set of events to get news of the Death Star to the Rebellion’s headquarters on Yavin, and thus to send Cassian (Diego Luna) off with …
Once again, Andor Season 2 moves one year later. When the clock rolls forward to BBY 2 at the start of Episode 7, Messenger, Cassian (Diego Luna) is on Yavin itself, working with organised and rapidly mobilising Rebel forces rather than just as the mercenary of Luthen (Stellan Skarsgard). Of …
In its second week, Andor’s second series has again jumped a year forward, covering a span of mere days in BBY 3. The jump can be disorientating at first, as the cast of characters finds itself in largely new configurations. However, the show is confident enough to hint at what …
A lot has changed in the two and a half years since Andor first landed on Disney+ screens in autumn 2022 in the wider world, and the return of possibly Star Wars’ most overtly political and subversive entry was highly anticipated. While always in production as a two-season show, the …
After strike-induced delays, the second series of Andor arrives on 22 April 2025, almost two and a half years after the first series first appeared on Disney+. This time, it will deliver its twelve episodes over a might-tighter release window (twelve episodes over four weeks rather than ten). Revisiting Andor’s …
In his essay Defense of an Adaptation, French film critic and co-founder of the historical film magazine Cahiers du Cinema André Bazin states that a literary adaptation for the cinema is impure. He points out how dependence on another medium affects filmmaking and how leaning over another source material, either …
In The End, Joshua Oppenheimer turns his camera from documentary towards fiction while continuing his exploration of the lies people tell themselves. The film opens with a young man (George Mackay) painstakingly painting miniature figures and landscapes onto a large diorama; on closer inspection, the diorama seems to encapsulate a …
Bong Joon-ho is one of the most fascinating filmmakers of the century. From The Host to Parasite, not forgetting Snowpiercer or Okja, the writer-director jumps from genre to genre, blending distinct tones with remarkable balance and efficiency. Joon-ho fits into that special category of filmmakers who simply cannot make a …
At the beginning of Parthenope, the protagonist reflects on the concept of beauty, saying that it lasts only for 10 minutes and all that is left after that is just boredom. Interestingly enough, that is exactly how I ended up feeling about the entire film after the first few scenes. …
Nosferatu may be a renowned film for its experimental Expressionism techniques, unsettling settings examining the Occult and its controversial backstory, which led to all copies of the original 1922 silent film by F.W. Murnau being destroyed due to copyright infringement of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Ensuing restoration efforts resulted in …
J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings saga struck such a colossal nerve when it was first published because it was a reaction to the loss of the first World War. The displacement of the muddy, modern conflict into a deliberately regressive story of magic and magical creatures …
Musician and filmmaker H.P. Mendoza’s newest release The Secret Art of Human Flight looks like a B-movie and has an absurd premise usually seen in average-quality YouTube shorts. Known for his skill directing small-budget movies, Mendoza manages to take a film that even at its premise, teeters toward collapse and …
DC Comics has no shortage of quality animated material. This includes numerous direct-to-DVD films (the most recent being the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earth trilogy). While those have offered mixed results, one corner of DC that has remained popular is its animated television content. HBO Max’s shows, such as …
2017’s The Greatest Showman is a musical drama whose popularity I struggle to understand. For all its huge setpieces and hyper-stylised choreography its narrative and thematic substance was cloying and often faux, with overwhelmingly bland songs – minus Rewrite the Stars – to boot. Director Michael Gracey at last returns …
On the 26th September 2021, screenwriter Russell Hainline posted on Twitter: “Just had the best idea for a Hallmark Christmas movie holy sh-t holy sh-t holy sh-t.” On the 13th November 2024, Netflix released the end result of this tweet: Hot Frosty. Mr. Hainline’s tweet made allusions to Hot Frosty …
After two monumental entries into the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi had a lot riding on it. Trying to stick the landing is always a high pressure job but with this final piece of the original trilogy, we are thankfully in luck. While it’s not as airtight of …
If anyone suspected that the success of George Lucas’s Star Wars was a fluke, then the 1980s Irvin Kershner-directed The Empire Strikes Back smothered these allegations. It maintains the imagination and splendour of the original while adding narrative twists and new character dimensions to the mix. But while it is, …
In 1977, blockbuster cinema changed forever with the release of George Lucas’s Star Wars. While Steven Spielberg’s Jaws spawned the term blockbuster, Star Wars came to define the genre with its humongous popularity, critical acclaim, and financial success, which was unlike anything cinemas had seen at that point. Nearly fifty …
2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – the final entry in the Star Wars sequel trilogy – had severe production hurdles from the start. The film was originally going to be helmed by Jurassic World director Colin Treverrow, who had managed to pen a full script with Derek Connolly …