As repetitive as the time loop movie might have been in the last 12 months (just like the 12 months before and the 12 months before that etc), it’s not been quite as omnipresent, or as tiresome, as the running joke that we’re all essentially stuck in one of our own thanks to the restricted routine that’s been forced on us all. But even a year ago, Boss Level, Joe Carnahan’s action movie spin on...
While all awards-season eyes were on Anthony Hopkins’s showy turn in the psychological melodrama The Father, Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci received scant attention for their more underplayed roles in this similarly dementia-themed drama. It’s easy to see why Supernova got overlooked; for all its awards-friendly subject matter, this is more of a bittersweet breakup movie than a hot-topic picture...
It would perhaps be overly generous to say that the Netflix dating caper Good on Paper was itself an embodiment of its title but pre-release there were enough reasons to at least label it “fine on paper”, a welcome addition to the streamer’s growing sub-genre of female-fronted, and created, comedies. First, and what’s often most depressingly appealing these days about a Netflix “original” is that...
The latest from Pixar, and the feature directing debut of Enrico Casarosa, Luca is a gentle pleasure about friendship and not quite fitting in. Luca, voiced by Room’s Jacob Tremblay, is a sea monster who longs to explore the world beyond the reef. He knows that once on land he will assume human form, but good kids like Luca don’t break the rules. Then he meets Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), an...
This adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2005 stage musical bursts on to the screen like a confetti cannon. Director Jon M Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) delivers a blast of sunshine, hope and hotpants. But unpeel the song-and-dance romance and escapism and there’s a socially engaged, issue-led drama under the sparkle and pizzazz. Of course it’s not unprecedented for superficially frivolous musicals to...
This debut feature from 25-year-old writer-director Emma Seligman is an amusing, self-aware, indulgent and transparently personal chamber piece, developed from an earlier short she submitted as her NYU thesis film. It could have been partly inspired by the party scene at the beginning of The Graduate, the one where smug oldsters tell Dustin Hoffman’s character he should be getting into plastics...
There’s something so distractingly and, errr, sleepily half-assed about the inert new Netflix thriller Awake that watching it is almost as much of a bore as having to then write about it. Seemingly designed to lazily fill the column of “If you liked Bird Box then you should also watch” there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done before and better, a film that lumbers up to the table with...
The debut feature from English-Pakistani film-maker Aleem Khan is a tale of secrets and lies, a portrait of people caught between identities and cultures. At its heart is a constrained yet wonderfully expressive performance by the versatile Joanna Scanlan, best known to some for her comedic work in shows such as Getting On and The Thick of It, here offering a masterclass in the dramatic power of...
“Ihave become my grief.” So writes Abigail (Katherine Waterston) in the journal that was intended as a ledger for the quotidian details of 1850s US frontier farm life, but turns into a poetic account of her inner turmoil – Emily Dickinson-infused moments of anguish as she stoically chisels ice from the potatoes for lunch. Then one day a wagon rolls past bearing the new tenants to the neighbouring...
MNight Shyamalan is enjoying some serious mojo-recovery with his best film since The Sixth Sense: a woozy high-concept horror about being trapped on an apparently idyllic private beach, where time is fatally accelerated. Anyone who dislikes overheated beach holidays will probably already know the feeling of supernaturally rapid ageing, horror and face-shrivelling panic. And in fact these are the...