Big name directors at their best feature alongside daring visionaries from the farther realms of art cinema – but to whom will Bong Joon-ho’s jury award the Golden Lion?Critics are allegedly very hard to please. There’s a joke told in the 19th-century …
Halloween Kills review – indestructible killer returns in efficient follow-up
Forty years on from John Carpenter’s classic slasher film, David Gordon Green’s latest reanimation of the title is functional but enjoyableIt’s Halloween 2018 in Haddonfield, Illinois, and the time-honoured festivities are in full swing. At the start o…
Old Henry review – a rootin’ tootin’ barrel of wild-west cliches
Tim Blake Nelson has a blast as a pig farmer with something to hide, but this low-aiming western is as familiar as refried beansOld Henry premieres at the Sala Grande here at Venice, with the sea at its front and the gondolas at its back and it’s hard …
Venice film festival red carpet: from Helen Mirren to Timothée Chalamet – in pictures
Foil wraps, bandage dresses … and general va va voom. A selection of the best looks from the 2021 event Continue reading…
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon review – B-movie thrills in New Orleans superhero gumbo
The new film from Ana Lily Amirpour will keep the fans happy with the tale of mind-controlling waitress on the loose the French QuarterIranian-American director Ana Lily Amirpour serves up heaped spoonfuls of B-movie thrills in Mona Lisa and the Blood …
Last Night in Soho review – a gaudy romp that’s stupidly enjoyable
Edgar Wright’s time-travel film plays like a 60s pop song building towards a big climaxThe nostalgia gauge is code-red on Last Night in Soho, a gaudy time-travel romp that whisks its modern-day heroine to a bygone London that probably never existed out…
Il Buco review – unhurried meditation on the beauties of geological time
Ten years after village doc Le Quattro Volte, Michelangelo Frammartino returns with an observational piece centring on a deep-cave system in CalabriaIn 2011 Italian artist Michelangelo Frammartino scored a small indie hit with a film called Le Quattro …
The Lost Daughter review – Olivia Colman lights up Elena Ferrante psychodrama
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s accomplished directing debut makes humid, sensual cinema of Ferrante’s novelOlivia Colman gives a powerhouse turn in The Lost Daughter, prickly and combustible as Leda Caruso, a middle-aged languages professor on a working holiday i…
Spencer review – Princess Diana’s disastrous marriage makes a magnificent farce
Kristen Stewart’s entirely compelling Di has no escape from the dress-up game of monarchy in Pablo Larraín’s unreverential movieSandringham, Christmas 1991. Bare trees, frosted fields, dead pheasants on the drive. Inside the grand house the dining tabl…
The Hand of God review – Paolo Sorrentino exposes his childhood trauma
Going back to Naples and the tragedy that changed his life, The Great Beauty director evokes his adolescence with bawdy vigourAt 16, Paolo Sorrentino returned home to find that both his parents were dead, killed by a carbon monoxide leak. On the night …