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Film reviews

Reviews in Retrospect: A Beautiful Mind

Ron Howard’s adaptation explores the interface of our inner and outer worlds, and the capacity we have in creating reality from what we value most.

Reviews in Retrospect: Smoke

Wayne Wang and Paul Auster's 1995 indie comedy drama explores the interconnectivity of personal stories and the prospect of recovery through community and connection.

The Story of Plastic

The last decade has seen a profound shift in our relationship with the environment. The spotlight has been on climate change, habitat…

The Lighthouse: An American myth

Salt-crusted wood and flaky green metal, the lightest footprint of civilisation already ruined and retaken by the sea and sand of a lonely…

Parasite: Them...and us

Bong Joon-Ho's tale of the clashing worlds of the wealthy Park family and the impoverished Kim family relies on a wilful ignorance of what…

Uncut Gems: Rat, meet maze

The Safdie Brothers' anxiety-riddled Uncut Gems is a film about escape; a film about an indebted gambler scheming against all the odds that…

Honey Boy: Healing in Motion

There comes a point in Honey Boy, a semi-autobiographical film that explores child actor Otis Lort's relationship with his outlaw father,…

Knives Out: Whodunnit? Riandiddit

A picturesque, secluded home, a gallery of guests with bones to pick and a wealthy patriarch with his throat slit. It's almost too perfect…

The Irishman: Scorsese's Third Act

The Irishman is a funereal film. It's one of those melancholy retrospectives that a master of cinema might create as they approach their…

Joker

Something like Joker was inevitable. With the superhero genre having long since conquered contemporary cinema, it was only a matter of time…

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

When Breaking Bad, among the most groundbreaking and beloved TV shows this side of The Sopranos, drew to a close in 2013, showrunner Vince…

Filmreel Woman at War

Protagonist and antagonist Hella balances her environmental and personal lives.

Filmreel Words of Love

The beauty of Leonard Cohen's words is superbly captured in the documentary.

Bait: 'Uncanny and singular'

Bait is a film about a familiar and very contemporary conflict: the locals of a tiny Cornish fishing village being squeezed out by an…

The Farewell

The set-up of The Farewell could be that of a straightforward melodrama or dark comedy. Billi (Awkwafina), a struggling writer in New York,…

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is a perfectly fine 90-minute movie hidden inside an overlong mess that drags on for 159 minutes, which for…