In a cinema environment overcrowded with remakes, reboots, sequels and superhero movies, it’s a pleasant surprise to come across something that’s as unique and genuinely entertaining and as hard to define as Polite Society. This energetic and colourful hybrid of Bollywood films, fantasy, high school comedy, rom-com, martial arts drama and action-thriller has been compared…
A troubled man tries to get home for his mother’s funeral, but events conspire to delay his journey. The third feature film from Ari Aster (Hereditary) is a completely bonkers, surreal and bloated pitch-black absurdist comedy. Beau Is Afraid isn’t so much your typical horror film but rather more of a disturbing Kafkaesque nightmare full…
A donkey embarks on an existential journey and witnesses the best and worst of humanity in the latest quirky film from revered Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (Essential Killing). Both visually and thematically it is an ugly film. A mob of soccer hooligans almost beat Eo to death mistaking it for the mascot for the opposition…
In director by Richard Eyre’s Allelujah, the Bethlehem is a small geriatric hospital in Yorkshire and its various wards are named after celebrities who have donated money. But the hospital is now being threatened with closure due to budget cuts by the Minister of Health as the politician wants to focus the health system on…
It’s been fifty years since the horror classic The Exorcist hit screens and scared the bejesus out of audiences. Since then there have been many other films that have delved into the demonic possession genre. The Pope’s Exorcist is the latest in a long line of such films and it ticks off all the usual…
Keanu Reeves returns as the taciturn, virtually indestructible lone-wolf assassin John Wick. This is the fourth installment in the successful franchise that has continually raised the bar in terms of staging kinetic action sequences. The 2014 original boasted some of the best stunt choreography and kinetic action sequences from a Hollywood movie. And John Wick:…
Based on a true story, Till is a film full of pain, grief, anger. It’s a powerful howl of outrage against a blatant miscarriage of justice that has never been rectified. In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall) was holidaying with his cousins in Mississippi. A native of Chicago, Emmett was an outgoing, high spirited,…
Lonesome is the sexually explicit sophomore feature from writer/director Craig Boreham, one of our finest exponents of queer cinema at the moment, and it follows his 2016 debut Teenage Kicks. The low-budget film looks at the commonality of the LGBTQI+ young men drawn to the big city and the allure of bright lights and excitement…
The European co-production Corage is an unconventional biopic looking at the (largely fictional) last year in the life of Empress Elizabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps). Elizabeth is married to Emperor Franz Joseph (Florian Teichtmeister), but she feels like she is merely an appendage. Given no real power, her duties are considered merely ceremonial. It is…
The cringeworthy and unfunny comedy The Honeymoon is an Italian/British co-production and it’s received some of the worst reviews of the year. Adam (Pico Alexander) has been best friends with Bav (Asim Chaudhry) since they were children and they called themselves “the inseparables.” But as a teenager Adam moved to America with his family for…
