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Film reviews

The New Corporation

The “unfortunately necessary sequel” doc to 2003’s The Corporation skewers modern forms of colonialism, looking at how the face of big business has changed – but behaviours haven’t.

Can’t Get You Out of My Head

Archivist documentarian Adam Curtis returns with ‘An Emotional History of the Modern World’, an attempt to chart how we came to be ruled by machine intelligences and blood-and-soil idiocies.

True Stories

35 years after release, David Byrne’s satirical, patriotic, postmodern musical still feels like a raw and provocative commentary on everyday life.

Malcolm & Marie

It's painful to watch Zendaya and Washington give what may be career-best performances in such an unfocussed and confused film.

Shirley

In many ways new ground for director Josephine Decker, Shirley is also unmistakably hers, exploring unspeakable horror and strained man-woman interactions which conjure spectres.

Red Post on Escher Street

By Japanese director Sion Sono’s standards, this film-about-film is restrained. It’s also egalitarian, moving – and one of the best of 2020.

Time

Garrett Bradley’s tender and emotional documentary explores the unthinkable loss of long-term incarceration in America’s racist prison system.

Reviews in Retrospect: In Bruges

A superb alternative Christmas film, this crime drama-cum-black comedy is a contemporary fable that examines the nature of morality itself.

Mothra

The giant divine moth, who would later share the screen with Godzilla, returns with a Blu-ray re-release of her first cinematic appearance in 1961.

Emma

The combination of cinematography and a hilariously expressive cast turns the whole silly drama into something altogether musical.

The Trial of the Chicago 7

Even taken purely as fiction, the latest film by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin is a mess of cognitive dissonance, a film profoundly at odds with itself.

Rebecca

Ben Wheatley’s new Netflix film might make you wonder where the company gets the audacity to continually raise its subscription price.

Reviews in Retrospect: Good Will Hunting

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's exceptional screenwriting debut is ultimately a feel-good movie about the tension between the need for belonging and the search for the authentic self.

Anonymous Animals

A serious, impressively committed and entirely wordless indie horror about humans being hunted and slaughtered by other animals.

Like

Screened as part of Spirit of Independence micro-budget film festival, Like avoids the pitfalls of the ‘found footage’ genre to comment on social media, performance and human relationships.