Reviews on The Review

I first visited Hebden Bridge 20 years ago, and was captivated by its gothic remoteness and Victorian charm.  Its plethora of book, record and junk shops didn’t hurt either, and I’ve been drawn back to the town every year or two since.  If it hadn’t been so distant from jobs, family and friends I would [...]

With the summer blockbuster season still some way off, it’s possible that there may yet be a worse film released this year, but they’re going to have to try particularly hard to sink to lower depths than Perrier’s Bounty.
 
Set in contemporary Dublin, this shockingly clichéd film follows Michael McCrea (Cillian Murphy) through 48 hours that [...]

The strapline for Jessica Hausner’s wonderful Lourdes is ‘Nothing tests faith more than a miracle’.  The other issue that’s central to the film is the deeply human ‘Why me?’.
 

Lourdes is set among a tour party to the shrine organised by the Order of Malta. It centres on Christine who suffers from multiple schlerosis;  her hands [...]

Shutter Island is a rather odd film. The script is sometimes very good; its abrupt transitions and elliptical style ensure a good if not great performance from the film’s main star, Leonardo Dicaprio. But elsewhere the script feels stagey and mannered, resulting in rather forced performances from the European players who play the supporting characters, [...]

This quiet, lovely Japanese ensemble piece is much haunted. It is haunted by the constant presence of Junpei, the older son whose death by drowning is the cause for the family gathering this film records. It is haunted by the Japanese film maker Yazojiro Ozu and, in particular, his Tokyo Story whose pale but intense [...]

According to the inverse law of action movie length vs. depth, every too familiar nuance of this nearly three-hour ‘epic’ can be recounted in a couple of breaths: A disabled ex-soldier is sent in to improve relations with an indigenous population who stand in the way of some economically precious natural resource. Inevitably, he grows [...]

Peter Strickland’s Katalin Varga is a revenge tragedy set in a part of modern-day Europe so remote that people still turn the hay by hand, put strangers up for the night and where a lone woman can drive her son on a horse and cart for miles between villages. Yet it is a place [...]

With so much debate today focussing on immigration, it seems strange that so few films have looked at the topic. Hollywood rarely goes near it for anything other than a new slant on romantic comedy (remember Green Card?) and Michael Winterbottom’s In this world remains a fairly rare instance in European cinema. Yet the immigrant [...]

Ever since taking the best foreign picture Oscar for Todo Sobre mi Madre, Pedro Almodóvar has seen anything he does loved by the majority of his fans, regardless of its actual quality. His films can belabour under ridiculous plots or drift along without even the merest hint of narrative [...]

German feature Jerichow made its UK debut at 2009’s Edinburgh International Film Festival on 19 June, and is arguably more appealing and straightforwardly enjoyable than many of the more high-profile premieres screened there so far.
Benno Furmann plays brooding ex-soldier Thomas, deep in debt and with few prospects, who moves into his mother’s country house [...]