Xiaopeng Tian’s 3D animation is a maximalist fever dream.
Continue readingTag Archives: 2.5 stars
Room 999 (Chambre 999) (2023)
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A room full of filmmakers with remarkably little insight into the world outside of their bubble.
Continue readingGive Me Pity! (2022)
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Return to Seoul (Retour à Séoul) (2022)
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I liked director Davy Chou’s 2016 film Diamond Island and his latest feature, set in South Korea rather than Cambodia, has the same slow, introspective quality.
Continue readingCrimes of the Future (2022)
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I think I knew this was going to be overblown Cronenberg fan boy drivel but Kristen Stewart so I pushed on through to a 9.45pm fourth film of the day sold out screening. I was lulled occasionally by KStew and the always mesmerising Léa Seydoux and stuck it through to its trite ending.
Continue readingKompromat (2022)
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Rules for escaping a totalitarian state: 1) Don’t use a mobile phone; 2) Don’t use a mobile phone to call the daughter-in-law of your pursuer; 3) Don’t use a torch when crossing a patrolled border at night. And a hot tip – Siberian aluminium foil is the bomb!
Continue readingDownton Abbey: A New Era (2022)
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A panacea for Downton fans, Downton Abbey: A New Era is as insubstantial as a cucumber sandwich with the crusts cut off.
Continue readingJames & Isey (2021)
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A well-meaning but underwhelming documentary that fails to paint a compelling portrait of its quirky Maori subjects.
Continue readingNew Order (Nuevo Orden) (2020)
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I wanted to like this confronting, dystopian thriller but it is so unrelentingly cynical and brutal that it felt it had nothing new to say.
Continue readingDigger (2020)
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I can see what this austere drama from Georgis Grigorakis was trying to do and, for a first feature, it is well crafted and tonally interesting. Pitched as a David and Goliath battle between an everyman and a mining company and also, oddly as a ‘Western, revisited’, it didn’t quite achieve its aim.
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