REVIEWS

Few filmmakers have spent as much time turning their own obsessions into art as Pedro Almodóvar. Across more than four decades, his films have returned to grief, desire, identity and the blurred line between reality and fiction, with filmmaking itself often part of the subject. If ‘Pain and Glory’ found Almodóvar looking back at his life, ‘Bitter Christmas’ finds him examining the process of transforming that life- and that of those around him- into cinema. ‘Bitter Christma

Civilisation has a tendency to be suspicious of those who choose to live without it. From hermits and survivalists to isolated communities tucked away from the modern world, people who exist beyond society's accepted boundaries have long fascinated us. Sometimes isolation breeds madness; sometimes enlightenment. More often than not, however, it simply produces people who are very, very strange. Such is the case with the characters in Louis Paxton’s ‘The Incomer’. It follows

There have been many films about teachers dealing with unruly pupils. From François Truffaut’s ‘The 400 Blows’ to Christophe Barratier’s ‘The Chorus’ and Michael Hoffman’s ‘The Emperor’s Club’, cinema has frequently explored the trials and tribulations of trying to keep a troublesome student in line. Few, however, have taken things quite so far as kidnapping the little sod and locking him in the basement. Jonatan Etzler’s ‘Bad Apples’ does just that. A dark comedy, it centr

Anthony Bourdain was never just a chef. After years in the rough-and-tumble world of professional kitchens, his memoir ‘Kitchen Confidential’ made him an unlikely literary star, while the shows ‘No Reservations’ and ‘Parts Unknown’ transformed food and travel television. He wasn't interested in glossy hotels or ticking landmarks off a list; he wanted to sit down with people, eat what they ate and understand the places he visited on their own terms. Food was merely the way in.

Eldar Ryazanov had a remarkable ability to find romance in the most unromantic places. Throughout his career, he used comedy to explore loneliness, bureaucracy and the absurdity of social convention. ‘The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath’ turned an accidental trip to Leningrad into an unlikely love story, while ‘Office Romance’ found passion blooming amid the confines of a Moscow workplace. With ‘The Garage’, meanwhile, Ryazanov turned his attention more directly towards soc

Estonian cinema in the late 1960s existed in a state of transformation. In ‘New Waves, New Spaces: Estonian Experimental Cinema of the 1970s’, Eva Näripea cites literary critic Mart Velsker, arguing that the innovative spirit of the 60s was expressed most vividly between 1968 and 1972. Yet the same paper notes that many local critics place the birth of "true" Estonian New Wave about a decade later. Although Estonian cinema from this time remains relatively unfamiliar to int

Few Japanese directors were as restless as Yasuzō Masumura, whose route into filmmaking was unusually circuitous. After studying law and philosophy at the University of Tokyo and working at Daiei, he travelled to Italy to learn from Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti and Michelangelo Antonioni. Back in Japan, he refined his craft under the likes of Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa before debuting with ‘Kisses’ in 1957, a film prompting Nagisa Ōshima to proclaim, “A powerful i

Imagine it’s 1978, and you’re in the cinema with a pal, watching John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween,’ say. Afterwards, your buddy has an accident, and is thrust into a coma for 30 years. They wake up in 2016, with a surprisingly robust bit of brain power left. The next ten years your friend spends regaining the ability to eat, breathe, speak, etc. They make remarkable progress, finally getting back to some semblance of normality. It’s then 2026, and doctors decide you can bring yo

Samara Weaving’s rise has been a bloody one. After making her name on Australian television, she gradually carved out a place for herself in genre cinema, appearing in projects like ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’, ‘The Babysitter’, and ‘Mayhem’, where she demonstrated a knack for mixing comedy with carnage. 2019’s ‘Ready or Not’ took things a step further, putting her firmly on the map as a formidable horror lead. Yet Weaving has never been content to stay in one lane, moving between com

They just don’t make films like they used to. That’s been said for a long time, and for a long time it’s been true. Nowadays, if a film has an original story, it’s a rarity. If it has decently written dialogue, it’s a miracle. We look back to the films of the 80s and 90s and wonder where the magic went, but travel back further and you're reminded just how effortless Hollywood could make it all seem. Especially when Howard Hawks was around. Roger Ebert called Hawks “one of t

Olivia Wilde's directing career has been anything but predictable. She burst onto the scene with the acclaimed ‘Booksmart’ in 2019, before the underwhelming ‘Don't Worry Darling’ became better known for its off-screen drama than its on-screen ambitions. Nevertheless, Wilde remains an intriguing filmmaker, continuing to explore different genres while taking creative risks. She returns to the director's chair with ‘The Invite’, an adaptation of Cesc Gay’s 2020 black comedy ‘Sen

Sonny Chiba is a legend. The action superstar began acting in the early 60s, rapidly making a name for himself as a charismatic, martial arts madman. By the 1970s, he was one of Japan's biggest stars, spearheading a wave of brutally violent action flicks, influencing generations of filmmakers, including Takashi Miike and Quentin Tarantino. From ‘The Street Fighter’ to ‘The Killing Machine,’ ‘Kill Bill Vol. 1’ and ‘The Storm Riders,’ Chiba showcased his talents across martial

Some of cinema's most unforgettable performers have been those willing to put themselves in harm's way. Buster Keaton transformed gravity into comedy through astonishing physical stunts, while Jean-Paul Belmondo was cut from the same cloth, performing daring feats with a grin suggesting he enjoyed every second of it. His charismatic screen presence would inspire stars such as Chow Yun-fat, while Jackie Chan would blend Keaton's gift for visual comedy with Belmondo's physical

Few novels have cast as long a shadow over popular culture as Mary Shelley's ‘Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus’. Published in 1818, the Gothic classic has been endlessly reinterpreted, from James Whale's immortal Universal horror films and the later Peter Cushing-led Hammer series, to Kenneth Branagh's lavish adaptation starring Robert De Niro, as well as Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited 2025 interpretation. Yet the legacy of Frankenstein extends far beyond direct a

The ‘Evil Dead’ series refuses to die. It began in 1979 with Sam Raimi's short film ‘Within the Woods’, a proof-of-concept that evolved into 1981's ‘The Evil Dead’. Buoyed by enthusiastic support from the likes of Stephen King, Raimi returned with 1987's darkly comic, splatstick masterpiece ‘Evil Dead II’, continuing hero Ash Williams' battle against the demonic deadites. ‘Army of Darkness’ followed in 1993 and, despite its reputation today as a cult classic, its modest box o

Anders Thomas Jensen is a singular voice in cinema. Managing to balance cynicism with compassion in a way few filmmakers can, his films concern themselves with misfits, eccentrics and society's castaways- lonely souls colliding in stories that are at once absurdly funny and unexpectedly moving. In a 2007 essay on Danish cinema, film historian David Bordwell stated “as there was the Lubitsch touch and the Wilder touch, we can now speak of the Jensen touch- a twinge of pathos a

From Peter Medak’s ‘The Ruling Class,’ to Stephen Frears’ ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ and Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘The Favourite,’ cinema has long enjoyed taking aim at the aristocracy. Stripped of grandeur and etiquette, the toffs and blue bloods are revealed as petty, shallow and ridiculous. Across these films, aristocracy is shown to be a well-worn stage on which vanity and self-interest are endlessly performed in elaborate costume. Peter Glanz’s ‘Savage House’ is the latest to skewe

Kim Jee-woon is a cinematic shapeshifter. From the explosive kimchi western 'The Good, The Bad, The Weird,' to comedies like 'The Quiet Family' and 'The Foul King,' as well as the violent, hyper-stylish 'A Bittersweet Life' and 'I Saw the Devil,' he has refused to be pigeon-holed and consistently entertained. A genre-hopping madman, Kim approaches each project with a restless creativity, making his work impossible to predict and endlessly rewarding to watch. His 2023 featur

Unlike his friend and classmate from the Higher Directing Course at Mosfilm, Georgiy Daneliya, Aleksandr Sery never had the opportunity to become a household name in Soviet cinema. He only made five features, and although one of them, ‘Gentlemen of Fortune’, became a cultural landmark, its production coincided with a devastating prognosis. During the making of that film, Sery was diagnosed with leukaemia, steadily eroding his health and ability to work. As the illness progres

There truly is something special about a cinema- or at least, there used to be. In times gone by, the local movie house wasn’t just a place to watch films: it was a communal space where strangers sat shoulder to shoulder, becoming a temporary family in the dark. Entire towns gathered to feel the same heartbeat for a few fleeting hours; for that brief span, everybody- no matter how different- was on the same wavelength, transfixed by the magic-lantern glow of film. Cinemas