Category: Film 3

Never one to downplay the power of film, Stanley Kubrick once said that “almost every novel could be successfully adapted”. He carried this confidence into his own filmmaking, working not from original screenplays, but from adaptations of novels as different as William Makepeace Thackeray’s historical romp Barry Lyndon (1844) and Vladimir Nabokov’s erotic fantasy Lolita (1955). Even Kubrick, however, allowed for the possibility… Continue reading White Noise review: director Noah Baumbach skilfully captures Don Delillo’s ‘unadaptable’ novel

Nothing about The Green Knight, the new film from director David Lowery, is comfortable. From its opening scene, where Gawain (Dev Patel) sits in an empty throne room, a crown menacingly hovering above his head as flames suddenly engulf him, this film is wonderfully unsettling. The Green Knight is a reimagining of the Middle English… Continue reading The Green Knight review: a wonderfully unsettling cinematic reimagining of the medieval story of Sir Gawain

Director Rachel Lambert’s sweet and sedate film Sometimes I Think About Dying frames suicidal thoughts as a strategy for survival. In the film, introverted office worker Fran (Daisy Ridley) takes solace in increasingly elaborate, surreal and aesthetic fantasies of her own death, including hanging from a crane, lying dead in the woods and being attacked… Continue reading Sometimes I Think About Dying Review: finally, a film about women’s mental health without the cliches

Trần Anh Hùng, the Vietnamese-born French director known for his Oscar-nominated film The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) and Norwegian Wood (2010), returns with another gorgeous work, The Taste of Things. Due for UK release in February 2024, the film is already out in France. The Taste of Things won the best director award at… Continue reading The Taste of Things review: this gastronomic French tale is a feast for the senses

Science fiction is never really about the future. The best sci-fi makes use of an imagined future world to provide a critical distance from our current time; to ask questions about what we are doing rather than where we are going. Director Garth Davis’ Foe, adapted from the novel by Iain Reid, is sci-fi for… Continue reading Foe review: a Frankenstein tale of the not-so-distant future

There have been more than 60,000 books written about Napoleon since his death in 1821. Cinema too has been drawn to him time and again. The Lumière brothers made a short film in 1897 and he featured in the mostly lost British film The Battle of Waterloo (1913). Already, the standard image of Napoleon was… Continue reading Napoleon Bonaparte features in 60,000 books and more than 100 films – does Ridley Scott’s stand up?

Premiering at TIFF in 2023 and featuring on this year’s lineup at BFI Flare, M.H. Murray both directs and writes this deeply personal feature debut. In the landscape of healthcare systems where affordability often dictates access to life-saving treatments, “I Don’t Know Who You Are” shines a piercing light on the stark realities faced by… Continue reading I Don’t Know Who You Are review