|
1/5
|
Megalopolis
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
On the whole, it's a desperately portentous affair, which makes you wonder whether the cast truly believed in the material, or whether they were content just to be working for the great Francis Ford Coppola?
Posted May 17, 2024
|
|
5/5
|
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
[Furiosa] is stunning on the eye, decidedly loud on the ear, and a thousand-watt jolt to the spirits. I loved it.
Posted May 15, 2024
|
|
3/5
|
The Fall Guy
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
... Its big achievement is in putting Gosling and Blunt together for the first time. They have proper screen chemistry.
Posted May 03, 2024
|
|
|
There’s Still Tomorrow
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
A picture of tremendous, sometimes whimsical charm and not a little mischief, filmed in black-and-white in the style of great works of Italian neorealism such as Rossellini's 1945 masterpiece, Rome... to which it would make a perfect companion piece.
Posted Apr 27, 2024
|
|
2/5
|
Ordinary Angels
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
It's billed as a 'faith-based' film, which usually means saccharine or maudlin, but Swank gives it a measure of credibility.
Posted Apr 27, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
Challengers
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
Challengers is not a classic, and might not even be one of Guadagnino's best three movies, but it's bright, sexy, witty and fun...
Posted Apr 27, 2024
|
|
1/5
|
Back to Black
(2024)
|
Peter Hoskin
|
All of the usual sins of biopics are committed here – only more so. We rush so quickly from Winehouse's becardiganed early years to her mid-noughties pomp to her alcohol-induced demise that we barely get to know her and those around her.
Posted Apr 09, 2024
|
|
1/5
|
The Trouble with Jessica
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
All this is presumably meant as a satire on the middle classes, but actually the big middle-class joke is the film itself: clunkily theatrical, with horrible, complacent characters...
Posted Apr 05, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
The First Omen
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
It's a nuttily compelling premise, what you might call the Devil and the Holy See, and Arkasha Stevenson's film realises it splendidly.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
|
|
2/5
|
Monkey Man
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
On the other hand, the way Monkey Man all but fetishises extreme violence raises the suspicion that the other stuff is just an excuse for him to unleash his inner Bruce Lee.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
Scoop
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
Scoop is never more electrifying than when it finally arrives at the only part of the story we already know intimately, the interview itself, with all its extraordinary minutiae... It is very carefully and convincingly recreated.
Posted Apr 04, 2024
|
|
1/5
|
Irish Wish
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
It's ghastly from start to finish, but there is some vague fun in counting the Emerald Isle cliches, which pile up like empty Guinness glasses in Scruffy Murphy's bar.
Posted Mar 15, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
Copa 71
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
A terrific documentary, Copa 71 sets the record straight...
Posted Mar 15, 2024
|
|
3/5
|
Red Island
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
This engagingly quirky (and visually stunning) French-language drama is set on a French air force base in Madagascar in the early 1970s, where the former colonisers continue to assert their control over the now-independent.
Posted Mar 01, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
Dune: Part Two
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
It was terrific, but exhausting, laboriously introducing us to the inter-planetary empire Herbert imagined, and the various dynasties grappling for power or simply survival.
Posted Mar 01, 2024
|
|
3/5
|
Bob Marley: One Love
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
Is this love? And worship, yes.
Posted Feb 12, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
The Iron Claw
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
Wonderfully acted across the board, The Iron Claw is a tremendous drama about one benighted family, but it also makes us think about our own clan dynamics.
Posted Feb 12, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
Migration
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
It's all extremely jaunty and colourful, with some great flights of fancy and smart one-liners to keep adult chaperones happy (I loved Awkwafina's 'sorry for busting your bills').
Posted Feb 02, 2024
|
|
3/5
|
Argylle
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
Clocking in at just under two-and-a-half hours, it does start to feel like a bit of an endurance test after a while. But in the nick of time the whole spectacle is lifted by a couple of genuinely exhilarating, laugh-out-loud action sequences.
Posted Feb 02, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
American Fiction
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
American Fiction reminded me strongly both of The Producers (1967) and Tootsie (1982), which is never a bad thing. But, while there are some hilarious moments, it is a darker film than either.
Posted Feb 02, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
All of Us Strangers
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
I found heaps of resonance in All Of Us Strangers, yet watched in admiration rather than adoration, tremendously engaged but not enormously moved.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
|
|
3/5
|
The Color Purple
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
There are certainly a few splendid scenes, although the greatest thing about this over-long musical might be the producers: Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Quincy Jones.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
|
|
3/5
|
The Kitchen
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
[Ian Wright] is jolly good.
Posted Jan 19, 2024
|
|
3/5
|
The End We Start From
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
Alice Birch's screenplay keeps the dialogue extremely spare, and frankly the film is 20 per cent too enigmatic for my liking, but it works as a tale of motherhood in all-too-believably challenging circumstances.
Posted Jan 19, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
Mean Girls
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
It's tremendous fun.
Posted Jan 19, 2024
|
|
2/5
|
Anyone But You
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
The dialogue is glib, the slapstick unfunny, the relationship dynamics implausible. On the upside, as a showcase for fine musculature and great dentistry, it cannot be faulted.
Posted Jan 05, 2024
|
|
2/5
|
Priscilla
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
... Is not that it isn't interesting, but that it seems relentlessly agenda-driven.
Posted Jan 05, 2024
|
|
3/5
|
The Boy and the Heron
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
... The film has much to say about bereavement and growing up, wrapped in layers of oddness that in truth begin to lose their charm over the course of two hours plus. Nevertheless, the craftsmanship is wonderful.
Posted Jan 05, 2024
|
|
2/5
|
Good Grief
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
None of it is original and none of the characters are likeable, a problem the film fails to overcome despite a decent cast that includes David Bradley, Celia Imrie and Ruth Negga.
Posted Jan 05, 2024
|
|
3/5
|
Arthur's Whisky
(2024)
|
Brian Viner
|
Arthur's Whisky is not an especially fine addition to the species, but it bowls along with appealing energy and just enough wit to keep the audience smiling, albeit a little indulgently at times.
Posted Jan 05, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
Society of the Snow
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
To his huge credit, Spanish director J. A. Bayona presents this intense, harrowing story without any voyeurism, indeed with sensitivity and compassion.
Posted Jan 05, 2024
|
|
4/5
|
Catch Me Daddy
(2014)
|
Brian Viner
|
It’s a deeply troubling tale, stirringly told by a pair of film-makers who one hopes will continue as they have started, showing the keenest of eyes and ears for contemporary British life.
Posted Dec 26, 2023
|
|
2/5
|
What Happens Later
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
Ryan has not entirely lost the magnetism that made her such a queen of the genre 30-odd years ago. But as the realisation dawns that the movie is a two-hander, and that we're stuck with just the W. Davises... all prospects of enjoyment begin to fade.
Posted Dec 18, 2023
|
|
3/5
|
The Three Musketeers: Part II - Milady
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
What it does indubitably offer, however, is loads of old-fashioned swashbuckling and, in parts, a lively wit.
Posted Dec 18, 2023
|
|
4/5
|
Mind-Set
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
Mikey Murray's monochrome film has oodles of wit and poignant charm.
Posted Dec 08, 2023
|
|
3/5
|
Tarrac!
(2022)
|
Brian Viner
|
It's a familiar sporting underdog story, brimming with all the usual cliches, but it's nicely acted and gorgeous on the eye.
Posted Dec 08, 2023
|
|
2/5
|
The Inseparables
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
The Inseparables is a somewhat lacklustre children's film, an animation about a wooden string-puppet called Don, voiced, I'm sorry to say, with matching woodenness by Dakota West.
Posted Dec 08, 2023
|
|
5/5
|
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
Dawn Of The Nugget, directed by Sam Fell, is deliciously imaginative and magnificently animated. The Chicken Run writers Karey Kirkpatrick and John O'Farrell have returned to script it and have done so with terrific verve and wit.
Posted Dec 08, 2023
|
|
2/5
|
Wonka
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
Chalamet is too wholesome for this role, and never quite finds the charisma he needs to fully engage us as a song-and-dance man, in a film that also feels too derivative by half.
Posted Dec 08, 2023
|
|
4/5
|
Fallen Leaves
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
It’s a quiet, sweet, witty, moving Finnish-language drama about a relationship that slowly develops...
Posted Dec 01, 2023
|
|
3/5
|
There's Something in the Barn
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
If you don’t mind your Christmas spirit curdled by murder and mayhem, there’s plenty here to put you in the festive mood...
Posted Dec 01, 2023
|
|
4/5
|
Eileen
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
Hathaway, a movie star whose rom-com past sometimes denies her the stature she deserves as an actress of real heft, is terrific as the sophisticated Rebecca.
Posted Dec 01, 2023
|
|
3/5
|
Leave the World Behind
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
Sam Esmail presents some spectacular images but the film is at least 25 minutes too long. A Quiet Place (2018) covered broadly similar territory much more deftly.
Posted Nov 28, 2023
|
|
2/5
|
Wish
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
With lacklustre animation and forgettable songs, it tries desperately to be a new Frozen but falls many snowballs short, despite a decent voice cast...
Posted Nov 28, 2023
|
|
4/5
|
Maestro
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
Bradley Cooper's Maestro is a searingly intelligent drama...
Posted Nov 28, 2023
|
|
|
The Duellists
(1977)
|
Russell Davies
|
Scott's film is a success. It is also something of an oddity.
Posted Nov 21, 2023
|
|
3/5
|
Driving Madeleine
(2022)
|
Brian Viner
|
The acting is delightful, the Paris landmarks evocative, the writing at times a bit clunky, but on the whole, Christian Carion's film is a pleasure.
Posted Nov 17, 2023
|
|
2/5
|
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
If you bought into the first four instalments, then you will doubtless have fun, but it seemed to me to go on for ever...
Posted Nov 17, 2023
|
|
3/5
|
Napoleon
(2023)
|
Brian Viner
|
The film is sumptuously watchable but also inherently flawed. Phoenix mumbles his way through it... and David Scarpa's script doesn't allow Napoleon to express himself much beyond the battlefield and the bedroom.
Posted Nov 15, 2023
|
|
|
Flags of Our Fathers
(2006)
|
Christopher Tookey
|
Eastwood strips away the phoniness of myth-making to discover the harsh, uncomfortable realities beneath. His film is hugely emotional about the experience of warfare, but it is also balanced and rational.
Posted Nov 10, 2023
|