CineVue

DVD Review: Tag

★★★☆☆ Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) is on a school bus with her friends when an invisible force rips off the top of the bus, severing all but Mitsuko in half. Running away in terror, she suddenly finds herself dressed in a different school uniform and with an unfamiliar group of friends. From there, things become increasingly…

DVD Review: The Big Sick

★★★★☆ Starring Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan, The Big Sick is that rarest of things: a funny and smart romantic comedy that is actually about something and is good enough to make you care for its characters. The move from television comedy to big screen exposure is fraught with danger. For every Will Ferrell –…

Film Review: Justice League

★★☆☆☆ Superman (Henry Cavill) is dead. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is stopping bank robberies and Batman (Ben Affleck) is chasing down weird bug-men from space. But with a new threat on the horizon, the Dark Knight and the Amazon princess must unite along with Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and The Flash (Ezra Miller)…

Made in Prague: Our festival highlights

The Made in Prague Film Festival (10-19 November) is back in London over the next two weekends. Programmed by the Czech Cultural Centre, new films will be accompanied by the first ever UK retrospective of seminal Czech New Wave filmmaker Jan Němec. Němec was an exciting name in an exciting scene in the 1960s, graduating…

Film Review: Paddington 2

★★★★☆ The bear from deepest, darkest Peru is back, now firmly established in his north London home of 32 Windsor Gardens with the Browns and ready for another adventure with Paddington 2. Paul King is once again at the helm, as well as a few cast additions. The first Paddington was a joyful and somewhat…

Film Review: No Stone Unturned

★★★☆☆ Alex Gibney’s latest project, No Stone Unturned, is a mysterious, gripping re-opening of the unsolved 1994 Loughinisland massacre investigation. It is told with characteristic precision, compassion and determination by its prolific director. Searching for needles in haystacks has long been Gibney’s metier but here the smoke and mirrors of governmental complicity and the thick…

Film Review: Murder on the Orient Express

★★★☆☆ The world’s most famous detective, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh), is about to embark on a long overdue holiday in this lavish re-telling of Murder on the Orient Express. His friend, Bouc (Tom Bateman), secures him a place on the eponymous train. Poirot’s holiday is cut short when one of the passengers turns up dead,…

Film Review: The Florida Project

★★★★★ “That’s my favourite tree,” Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) tells her friend “because it’s fallen but it still grows.” It’s a moment of lyrical beauty, underlined by a long shot of the two kids sitting in the tree itself, and sums up the theme of The Florida Project, Sean Baker’s Tangerine follow-up. Six-year-old Moonee lives with…

Film Review: Félicité

★★★☆☆ Félicité marks a return to screens for Senegalese director Alain Gomis. A graceful and deeply sympathetic piece of work about a Congolese bar singer and her attempts to raise enough money for an operation for her teenage son, Félicité is an emotionally effective heart-tugger, thanks largely to Véro Tshanda Beya’s dignified lead performance. When…

DVD Review: The Tiger

★★★☆☆ Following historical drama The Showdown and gangster picture New World, Hoon-jung Park’s third feature is a suitably epic drama set during the Japanese occupation of Korea in 1925. The Tiger is an often moving fable about fatherhood, nature and respect, yet in never fully committing to its ambitions, doesn’t quite the impact that it might have. Chun Man-duk (Min-Sik…

DVD Review: Buster Keaton: 3 Films

★★★★★ Unfairly overshadowed by the works of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton was arguably the greatest of the silent clowns. Now, Eureka Video’s Masters of Cinema series brings together three of his best pictures – Sherlock Jr., The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr. – all lovingly remastered with 4K restorations. At only 45 minutes, the collection’s first…

Film Review: The Silence of the Lambs

★★★★★ With an opening jogging sequence only rivalled by Jonathan Glazer’s Birth, Jonathan Demme’s chilling masterpiece The Silence of the Lambs still manages to send tingles down the spine 26 years on from its original theatrical release. It’s intriguing to revisit the film in light of the recent release of Mindhunter, which premiered on Netflix…