A moving tale of rehabilitation, featuring many convicted criminals playing themselves, it is based on a theatre group at the notorious Sing Sing prison. Sing Sing is a maximum-security jail for men, some 50 kilometres north of midtown Manhattan, in New York City. The central character is John “Divine G” Whitfield (Colman Domingo), a foundation…
Stunning. A masterpiece. The Brutalist is a richly woven tale of pain and perseverance. It is the film of the year that, at the very least, deserves the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. Three hours 35 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission (with a countdown clock built into the movie one hour…
Bob Dylan is his own man, someone who has forged his own path in music, not restricted by convention. A Complete Unknown focuses on what he did and how he did it between 1961 to 1965. Arriving unannounced, with guitar in hand, as a 19-year-old, Dylan seeks out the legendary Woody Guthrie, who is in…
A striking musical drama, written and directed by Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez constantly shocks and surprises. Rita (Zoe Saldana) is an overqualified and undervalued lawyer at a Mexican firm that is more interested in getting criminals off the hook than bringing them to justice. After one such case, she is sought out by whispered, gravelly…
Between September 7th, 1940 and May 11th, 1941, the Nazis carried out an intense bombing campaign in London and other strategic cities across Britain. The offensive came to be known as the Blitz (after the German word for lightning war – blitzkrieg). During the Blitz, 1.25 million British living in urban centres, more than half…
Jesse Eisenberg has used his Jewish family’s roots to craft A Real Pain. The film follows cousins making a pilgrimage to their late grandmother’s childhood home in Poland. Eisenberg plays David Kaplan, an anxious New Yorker, married father of one and digital ad salesman. His travelling companion on the week-long trip is Benji Kaplan (Kieran…
The limits of friendship are tested in acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s English language debut, The Room Next Door. This lovingly crafted and often moving drama treats the very serious subject of assisted dying with grace and compassion. And despite the subject-matter, it’s not nearly as depressing as you might think. You can see on…
Let’s clear up the most obvious question about Better Man, so I can get on with talking about the film. Yes, Robbie Williams’ biopic sees the pop star portrayed as a CGI monkey and that is because he always saw himself as a little less evolved than others. While you obviously do a double take…
Set in Mumbai and in an Indian seaside village, All We Imagine as Light is an empathetic, slice of life film that focuses on the fate of three women. Foremost amongst them is Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a dedicated and highly regarded nurse at a Mumbai hospital, who is largely introspective. She is in an arranged…
Co-written by Marie Drucker and director Stephane Brize, Out of Season is a sensitive, slow-moving romance. Mathieu (Guillaume Canet) is a famous Parisian movie star, married to a prime-time news anchor. Four weeks before making his stage debut, Mathieu gets cold feet and pulls out, leaving everyone in the lurch. While he knows his withdrawal…
