Review-Lite: Medieval (2022)

Ben Foster and Alice Lowe in Medieval If you said the name Jan Žižka (Ben Foster) outside of the Czech Republic you'd be hard pressed to find someone, outside of historians who know the rebel general. Petr Jákl's film Medieval seeks to remedy that by giving a look at the young life of the man. …

Review-Lite: Penguin Bloom (2021)

Naomi Watts in Penguin Bloom There is a peaceful nature to this insulated story of family recovery, the true to life story of the Bloom family and how they move past Sam Bloom (Naomi Watts) paralysis following a fall on a holiday in Thailand with the help of a magpie they dub Penguin. Based on …

Review: Radioactive (2020) – Severely Anaemic

Rosamund Pike in Radioactive To assume you can get to the core of a person in two hours is folly and while Marjane Satrapi's Radioactive never presumes to know completely Marie Curie, the woman standing in the middle of this befuddling and overstuffed biopic, it strives so much to make her an icon, a symbol …

Review: Mr Jones (2020) – Starved For The Truth

James Norton in Mr Jones It seems that today for something to be taken seriously they either have to be sensationalised or so stark it is impossible not to take pause and pay attention. Agnieszka Holland's Mr Jones plays to the latter but squanders its graphic visuals by failing to connect to its central character. …

Review: Lost Girls (2020) – Clear, Cold & Clinical

Liz Garbus' Lost Girls is a dramatization of a real New York crime and the shockingly blundered investigation that it brought about. Garbus' past filmography has been solely devoted to documentary filmmaking and this Amy Ryan starring film plays at times in a clinical fashion, a retelling of facts for a captive audience, it manages …

Review: Military Wives (2020) – Keep Calm and Choir On

While for some Military Wives will feel like its own thing, a heartfelt story about different forms of courage. To me, it feels like a continuation of a trend that seems to be continuing unabated, with varying degrees of success. The cynical side of me can't help but see the releases of films about adults …

Review: Dark Waters (2020) – A Chemical Solution

In the 1960s reports began to surface that smoking was bad for our health, a revelation that seemed to be the first nail in the coffin for the smoking industry. Today, people are still smoking and an industry that relies on new customers finds even more nefarious ways to convince people to smoke, or vape, …

Review: A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood (2020) – A Helping Hand

Marielle Heller made waves last year with the Melissa McCarthy feature Can You Ever Forgive Me? It was a film that was brazenly selfish, amusingly so, with a cast of misanthropes and misfits failing to see the world around them due to their own deficiencies. Her follow-up, A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood is oddly …

Review: Richard Jewell (2020) – One of the Gang

While to some the notion of being important, doing something great and being someone of note is something to cling to as a form of life goal. Sure it isn't the most important part of life but this obsession with being noticed is one that is completely normal. It is the people that aim lower …

Review: Seberg (2020) – Not Beyond Good & Evil

When the trailers for Seberg began to circulate I had no clue what to make of it, the whole premise looked muddled from the get-go and while I was pleasantly surprised by how ambitious it tries to be it never really makes itself known, or vital, in the way it should, thanks to its own, …