I’ve heard it said that movies come into our lives, for a reason bringing something we must learn… And Wicked: For Good is teaching us a point that we might already know – sequels are never as good. Wicked: For Good follows on seamlessly from the original story – we meet the popular public personas of Glinda the Good (Ariana Grande), and Fiyero Tigelaar (Jonathan Bailey) as they run e...
Put on your thinking cap and put away all potential distractions because Luca Guadagnino is going to require your undivided attention as he explores murky moral and ethical territory with an intellectual lens and dialogue-heavy script in After The Hunt. Yale University philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) can appear stuffy and icy, but the intelligent career woman is popular among her ...
Two of the more formative moments in anyone’s life is losing someone close to you, and definitely fighting with your parents. Whether you’re regretting the epic showdown you had with your parents over getting a nose piercing in 2004, or genuinely touched after the loss of a parent, Regretting You, is sure to bring a tear to your eye, but in a very good way. Director Josh Boone brings his previous ...
F1: The Movie has started revving its engine, ready to race into cinemas this week. With director Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) and legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean franchise) behind the wheel, F1 fans are hoping this film will cross the finish line in first place – encapsulating all the drama and spectacle they come to expect from Formula 1, while paying ...
I confess: Wes Anderson films have never really done it for me. His cinema feels more architectural than visceral—films that seem made by and for the art-world elite, keeping the viewer at arm’s length. There’s a “you can look, but you can’t touch” energy to them. Don’t get me wrong: I went to film school. I fell in love with cinematography. I understand and respect the cra...
Nicholas Cage (Mandy, P I G) returns to cinema screens this week with The Surfer, directed by Lorcan Finnegan (Vivarium). In short, the film is a strange one and you’ll either love it or hate it. Set in Western Australia, starring Nicholas Cage and written and directed by a couple of Irishmen. The film reaches high but doesn’t hit the mark. Lacking authenticity while haphazardly dabbling with them...
Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Fatman, The Sea Beast) effortlessly portrays a woman on the edge of an emotional breakdown. However, Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths being an easily relatable week in the life of tale only goes so far. Moments of insult comedy laced with zingers aside, the film comes off underwhelming. Leigh’s (Peterloo, Vera Drake) direction and Dick Pope’s (The Air Up There) ci...
Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) isn’t just a film; it’s an emotional gut-punch, a reckoning with Brazil’s unhealed wounds through the eyes of a family that refused to be erased. This deeply personal and politically charged story earned a ten-minute standing ovation and the Best Screenplay award at Venice, and I’m not surprised. Salles’ long-standing connection with the Paiva...
Life ain’t always empty. Few directors capture working-class life as authentically as Andrea Arnold. Arnold is one of a very few class-conscious directors in the UK, where the industry is dominated by wealthy filmmakers who often depict working-class communities through a detached or exploitative lens. Having grown up on a council estate in Dartford, Kent—just miles from where Bird is set—she does...
“This is the role I have been waiting for my entire career,” Pamela Anderson told the crowd at the Toronto Film Festival. Anderson has seen a long overdue career resurgence in the 2020’s, from her 2022 stint as Roxie in Chicago, to her 2023 Netflix documentary and autobiography. It was after seeing the documentary that director Gia Coppola decided to cast her in The Last Showgirl. In a world that’...
L’Histoire de Souleymane (or “Souleymane’s Story” in English) is a complex political storyline wrapped in a touching narrative of the titular Souleymane. Directed by Boris Lojkine, the story follows Souleyman, a Guinean food delivery driver in the heart of Paris, in the two days before he is due to be interviewed about his application for asylum. Since its debut in Un Certain Regard, it has ...
The opening hour of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy takes its sweet time—way too much of it, in fact. We meet Bridget several years after Bridget Jones’s Baby, where she and Mark had a son and got hitched. In Mad About the Boy, Bridget has become a widow and single parent to Billy and his younger sister, Mabel, after Mark died while on a humanitarian trip four years prior. This new reality ...
