Director: Greta Gerwig Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts I've been thinking a lot about homogenised culture and Donnie Darko. Indulge me. I'm 34. When Donnie Darko came out - around the close of 2001, start of 2002 - its 1987 setting felt quirky and nostalgic. The fashions, the mindsets, the music. Maybe because I was … Continue reading Review: Lady Bird
Year: 2011 Director: Whit Stillman Stars: Greta Gerwig, Analeigh Tipton, Megalyn Echikunwoke With the arrival of Greta Gerwig's celebrated directorial debut Lady Bird on UK shores (after what feels like an eternity of waiting), it felt like the perfect time to reflect on one of her sparkling earlier roles in front of the camera. The most … Continue reading Why I Love… #91: Damsels In Distress
Director: Craig Gillespie Stars: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney When Craig Gillespie's Lars And The Real Girl landed in the late noughties it secured a safe place among the better twee American indie dramedies that typified the decade. In the subsequent years Gillespie's name has fallen somewhat out of interest, predominantly thanks to a series … Continue reading Review: I, Tonya
Director: Dan Gilroy Stars: Denzel Washington, Colin Farrell, Carmen Ejogo The Nightcrawler director returns with another burrowing character investigation. Where his previous reflected a gasoline flavoured nihilism and cast Los Angeles in sickly hues, this latest takes a more traditional approach. Denzel Washington stars as the titular character and his casting should tip some viewers to … Continue reading Review: Roman J. Israel Esq.
Director: Ryan Coogler Stars: Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira Black Panther is against binaries. It's against simplistic divisions such as seeing the world as East and West; Northern and Southern hemispheres; first world and third. It's against selective thinking that reduces arguments to black and white; selective thinking that can slice a crisis along … Continue reading Review: Black Panther
Director: James Foley Stars: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Rita Ora While it was guilty of a multitude of sins, sloppy seconds Fifty Shades Darker did manage to provide the comedic high point of the series thus far; an astonishing sequence in which Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) was involved in a helicopter crash only to spontaneously … Continue reading Review: Fifty Shades Freed
Director: Guillermo del Toro Stars: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Doug Jones The cinema of Guillermo del Toro has forever been a realm inflected with the strange and macabre. When captured in interview, the exuberant Mexican auteur often speaks with fondness of the creature features and monster movies that so influenced him as a child, and … Continue reading Review: The Shape Of Water
Director: Julius Onah Stars: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Daniel Brühl If there's one thing guaranteed to piss off the critics, it's getting excluded from the established pattern of pre-release screeners. Take a peek at 'Film Twitter' immediately after the surprise Super Bowl announcement that The Cloverfield Paradox would be available to stream on Netflix after the … Continue reading Review: The Cloverfield Paradox
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Stars: Vicky Krieps, Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville There is a darkly comic scene somewhere in the region of an hour into Phantom Thread in which a woman named Barbara Rose (Harriet Sansom Harris) sits pickled at a wedding party in an outfit made for her by master dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel … Continue reading Review: Phantom Thread
