Review: Externo (2021) – What Is Right?

Leandro Taub in Externo When describing Externo, the debut film from Leandro and Jonathan Taub, its easy to banish it to realms of fantasy by merely calling it a stunning fever dream. That wouldn't do this modern parable justice as it looks to the larger landscape of the world by letting us behind the curtain …

Review-Lite: Life in A Year (2021)

Jaden Smith and Cara Delevingne in Life In A Year Its been close to eight years since Jaden Smith's last attempt at taking on a leading role in a feature but since then he has matured with time and a major role in Baz Luhrmann's Netflix drama The Get Down. Life In A Year, originally …

Review: I Care A Lot (2021) – Going Down With The Showboat

Rosamund Pike in I Care A Lot Early on in J Blakeson's I Care A Lot there is a moment of acknowledgement, where in voiceover Marla (Rosamund Pike) tells the audience that being good and adhering to societies rules is weak. It's a hot take that's for sure but mostly it sets the stage for …

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-Lite: The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021)

Kathryn Newton and Kyle Allen in The Map of Tiny Perfect Things There is nothing more timeless than the time loop movie. Be it Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow (both name checked here with gleeful abandon) and honestly, considering lately, each day has the tendency to roll into the last one and so on …

Review: News of The World (2021) – O Captain, My Captain

Helena Zengel and Tom Hanks in News of the World When I envisioned another collaboration between filmmaker Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks after their piracy true story Captain Phillips, a western seemed outside of the realms of possibility with the slow melodic musings of such a genre seeming outside of Greengrass' previous body of work. …

Review-Lite: The Dig (2021)

Carey Mulligan in The Dig The Dig, the Netflix produced drama about the Sutton Hoo archaeological dig site and the unsung heroes of the find comes at a time when prestige dramas aren't so much missing from our screens but come with a weighty rental fee, let alone the opportunity to buy the film outright. …

Review: Malcolm & Marie (2021) – Air Your Grievances

Zendaya and John David Washington in Malcolm & Marie Plenty has been said about Malcolm & Marie and its inception, with director Sam Levinson (Euphoria) bringing together the talents of frequent collaborator Zendaya and BlacKkKlansman lead John David Washington and a crew of 22 people to pull off arguably the first major Covid secure production. …

Small Axe – A Past Not Past

Letitia Wright in Mangrove Coming late to the party and choosing to binge all of Steve McQueen's Small Axe series of films in one week in early January it was impossible not to notice how wildly different each story told here was from the other. While sometimes it made the experience as a whole inconsistent, …

Review: Pieces of A Woman (2021) – The Distance Between Us

Vanessa Kirby in Pieces of A Woman Losing a child is an unimaginable hurt, a constantly lingering harm that disconnects the unfortunate parents that suffer that loss from everybody else. It isn't unimaginable that it could happen, more that we cannot perceive the pain as being ever present and debilitating, something for which moving on …