Writer/director Brady Corbet’s (Vox Lux) The Brutalist is a monumental, expertly crafted and fascinating exploration of architecture, the immigrant experience, the American class system, art versus commerce and the quest to construct an identity. While it appears to have drawn inspiration from a variety of films such as The Pianist, There Will Be Blood, The Fountainhead, The Agony and Ecstasy
Read moreConclave, which is based on the 2016 Thomas Harris novel and comes from All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger, turns the potentially dull subject of a Pope election into a fascinating, if admittedly credulity stretching, hot house political drama. When the Pope dies of a heart attack, the reluctant Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is appointed to
Read moreWith their typically British combination of warmth, wit and mischievousness, the Paddington movies – featuring the eponymous bear in CGI form – have proven box office and critical favourites. The latest instalment, Paddington in Peru, which once again mixes sweetness, gleeful silliness and surreal invention, should continue to delight fans of the series. Not only is this a film for
Read moreThe western perception of Indian cinema usually involves extravagant Bollywood musicals but there’s a long and rich film history in India that takes in all genres. This includes social realist dramas such as the films of famed director Satyajit Ray. The latest example of the Indian social realist film, this time from writer/ director Payal Kapadia, is All We Imagine
Read moreKraven the Hunter, who originally appeared on Marvel Comics pages in 1964 as a nemesis for Spiderman is one of the lesser-known Marvel characters, at least for this reviewer. Whether or not he deserved a feature length film was probably debatable before the movie and having seen Kraven The Hunter, that doubt has only grown. This lunkheaded action adventure follows
Read moreWriter/director Sean Baker distinguished himself as an ultra-low budget filmmaker intrigued by the lives of people on society’s fringes such as transgender sex worker Sin-Dee in Tangerine and volatile single mother Halley in The Florida Project. After these raw and confronting films, he seemed to lose his way with the long rambling Red Rocket. His latest film, the Palm D’or
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