The great documentarian Molly Dineen once said her preferred subject was “anything British that’s dying”. Łukasz Kowalski’s debut film The Pawnshop, presented as part of the 2023 Kinoteka festival of Polish cinema, shows that this formula works for anything Polish as well. It’s set almost entirely within the four walls […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future (2022)(Review)
No, you’re quite right, we need to address that title first. What kind of film do you think The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future might be? Some fusion of Disney singalong and science fiction, maybe, a cross between Home on the Range and Ulysses 31. Sadly, Francesca […]
My Drywall Cocoon (SXSW 2023)(Review)
The only Brazilian feature in competition at this year’s SXSW, My Drywall Cocoon has a director who may not be familiar to English-language audiences, albeit largely due to the timidity of our distributors. Caroline Fioratti’s debut feature Meus 15 Anos was a huge crowd-pleaser in Brazil, but crowd-pleasers tend not […]
Smoking Causes Coughing (Glasgow Frightfest 2023)(Review)
Anyone who found this winter’s cycle of Oscar-bait movies about the magic of cinema rather too middlebrow may find respite in Quentin Dupieux’s Smoking Causes Coughing, the opening film at this year’s Glasgow FrightFest. Rather than the sanctified work of John Ford or Gene Kelly, Smoking Causes Coughing is inspired […]
Vivre Sa vie (1962): Godard, the ultimate cinephile, makes his most emotional film (Blu-Ray Review)
Which film director best exemplifies cinephilia? For many people today, the answer would be Quentin Tarantino, who’s just published a book giving his personal take on film history, Cinema Speculation. For Godard – who was less than flattered by Tarantino naming his production company after Godard’s 1964 film Bande a […]
You Resemble Me (2021): the real person behind the fake news (Review)
Time was, “From the executive producer of…” was the least impressive thing you could put on a poster, but now it’s become a handy guide to a film’s style and subject matter. Major directors are lending their imprimatur to films by new or less well-known directors, and it’s telling which […]
El Mar La Mar (2017): Experimental cinema in one of Earth’s most hostile landscapes (Review)
The title of Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki’s experimental documentary, El Mar La Mar, released on Blu-Ray by Second Run, refers to a passage in Anabasis by Xenophon of Athens. A chronicle of the victorious campaign of ten thousand Greek mercenaries to secure the Persian throne for their employer Cyrus […]
The Lukas Moodysson Collection (1998-2013)(Review)
The test of a good box set is not so much the quality of each individual film, but whether it gives you new contexts to appreciate the films you may not otherwise take to. Arrow’s new Blu-Ray set of every fiction feature directed by Lukas Moodysson deserves points for completeness, […]
Mississippi Masala (1991): cross-culture romance with a young Denzel Washington (Review)
Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, released on Blu-Ray by Criterion UK, is a nice film. Befuddlingly so, in fact. Nair’s only prior feature was Salaam Bombay! in 1988, a story of Indian street children gritty enough to have critics hailing her as the heir to Vittorio de Sica. Her second film […]
Rimini (2022): looking for the shaft of light in Ulrich Seidl’s sensibilities (Review)
There are countless horror movies that exploit the particular uncanniness of a holiday resort in winter, but none of them have featured a monster quite like Richie Bravo. The anti-hero of Ulrich Seidl’s latest film, Rimini, he’s a hulking, middle-aged lounge singer of limitless appetites and venality. After singing another […]