BFI Flare: Firebird (2021) – on demand
★★☆☆☆
At an Estonian air base in the Cold War a junior officer falls for a new lieutenant, leading to a forbidden romance which affects a number of lives in director Peeter Rebane’s romantic drama Firebird.
★★
The Beach Bum (2019)
★★☆☆☆
The Beach Bum is a Harmony Korine film for and about stoners, with all that entails.
Opus Zero (2017)
★★☆☆☆
Willem Dafoe is central to Opus Zero, Daniel Graham’s nebulous, Mexico-set feature debut.
Vita and Virginia (2018)
★★☆☆☆
Vita and Virginia by Chanya Button is a literary biopic doesn’t do justice to its iconic protagonists.
Vox Lux (2018)
★★☆☆☆
Vox Lux, Brady Corbet’s second film, is the imagined biography of a fictional pop star played uncomfortably by Natalie Portman.
Out of Blue (2018)
★★☆☆☆
Out of Blue by Carol Morley, the director of Dreams of a Life, is a metaphysical neo-noir, a Schrödinger’s cat of a film.
Journey’s End (2017)
★★☆☆☆
Journey’s End, director Sam Dibbs’ adaptation of R.C.Sherriff’s stage play, struggles to entrench itself in WWI.
BFI LFF: Journey’s End (2017)
★★☆☆☆
Journey’s End, director Sam Dibbs’ adaptation of R.C.Sherriff’s stage play, struggles to entrench itself in WWI.
BFI LFF: The Hungry (2017)
★★☆☆☆
The Hungry updates Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus to India’s modern-day elite.
BFI LFF: Spoor (2017)
★★☆☆☆
A clarion call against the mistreatment of animals and the hunting confederacy of men, against Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor loses its way in the snowy mountains.
Alone in Berlin (2016)
★★☆☆☆
Adapting Hans Fallada’s German resistance novel for the silver screen, Vincent Perez’ Alone In Berlin recreates the plot but none of the drama.
Cannes review: Rodin (2017)
★★★★☆
Rodin is a ploddingly, inexplicably uninteresting biopic of the revolutionary sculptor by Jacques Doillon.
Interlude in Prague (2017)
★★★★☆
John Stephenson OBE’s take on Mozart’s making of Don Giovanni is a romantic farrago of beautiful costumes and music in Interlude in Prague.
Cannes review: Ismaël’s Ghosts (2017)
★★★★☆
Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismaël’s Ghosts is an abstract, at times melodramatic interweaving of nightmare, filmmaking, fiction and reality.