BFI LFF Review: Holiday (2018)
★★★★☆
Holiday is a beautifully brutal first feature from Isabella Eklöf about a petty drug lord’s girlfriend who is in for a holiday she’ll never forget in a vicious, powerful and fresh look at the gangster genre.
Writers
BFI LFF Review: The Guilty (2018)
★★★★☆
Truth and justice clash in The Guilty (Den skyldige), Gustav Möller’s claustrophobic thriller , where no-one can walk away with their innocence intact.
BFI LFF Review: Monrovia, Indiana (2018)
★★★★☆
In Monrovia, Indiana, veteran documentarian Frederick Wiseman, compassionately chronicles life in small-town America.
BFI LFF Review: Crystal Swan (2018)
★★★★☆
The female-centric team of director Darya Zhuk, co-screenwriter Helga Landauer and cinematographer Carolina Costa give Alina Nasibullina a Madonna-esque starring role in post-Soviet black comedy Crystal Swan (Khrustal).
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2017)
★★★★☆
Frederick Wiseman’s compelling and comprehensive documentary reveals the behind-the-scenes work of a monumental American institution, the New York Public Library.
Berlinale: Transit (2018)
★★★★☆
Christian Petzold’s fascinating present-day World War II film Transit is thematically and narratively dense, but there’s nothing dense in the way it goes about handling it.
Berlinale: Dovlatov (2018)
★★★☆☆
Alexey German Jr’s character study of a great Russian writer in Dovlatovencapsulates its time period superbly, but fails to go beyond that.
Journey’s End (2017)
★★☆☆☆
Journey’s End, director Sam Dibbs’ adaptation of R.C.Sherriff’s stage play, struggles to entrench itself in WWI.
Battle of the Sexes (2017)
★★★★☆
Serving well-rounded feminist statements while expertly juggling three intertwining stories, Battle of the Sexes is an outwardly reaching argument encapsulated in a tennis match.
Thelma (2017)
★★★★☆
In Thelma, both the main protagonist and director Joachim Trier realise the potential of her psychic powers, culminating in a taut and shocking narrative that refuses to bow down to one particular genre.
BFI LFF: The Florida Project (2017)
★★★☆☆
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is a gorgeous sugar-rush adventure and a sobering study of poverty, though it leans too much on the former for the latter to leave its sting.
BFI LFF: Battle of the Sexes (2017)
★★★★☆
Serving well-rounded feminist statements while expertly juggling three intertwining stories, Battle of the Sexes is an outwardly reaching argument encapsulated in a tennis match.
BFI LFF: Wrath of Silence (Bao Lie Wu Sheng) (2017)
★★★★☆
Doling out as many bare-knuckle blows to its characters as it does to China’s corrupt political system, Wrath of Silence is A Touch of Sin that’s not afraid to be dramatic.
BFI LFF: 9 Fingers (2017)
★★★☆☆
Ossang’s latest is a nonsensical escape caught somewhere between Stalker and Maddin. It’s maddening stuff, but intentionally and admirably so.