The theme of the stressed-out, materialistic big city professional finding renewal and redemption in a small town is one mainstream cinema goes back to time and time again, and it usually makes my teeth itch. If big-name American directors really found Midwestern small towns as life-affirming as they claim to, […]
Reviews
In the Lost Lands (2025) A refreshingly middling blast from the past
Nostalgia can hit you when you least expect it. Just when you’re feeling a lull with the state of cinema, where long-running brands seem to be running shorter and shorter, when genres grow as tired as your heavy eyes, along can come a blast from the past to remind you […]
Falling Into Place (2023) From Meet-Cute to Ugly Realities
Released to cinemas on 6th June, Falling into Place is the directorial debut from the German actor Aylin Tezel, who has also written the screenplay and takes the lead role of Kira. Set in the urban metropolis of London and the windswept and rural Skye, Tezel’s seemingly personal film is a […]
Dangerous Animals (2025) The Must-See Bloody Horror Film of the Summer
Dangerous Animals features 3 of my greatest fears: the open water, sharks and a deranged (but sexy) serial killer. Director Sean Byrne takes the shark movies we all know and love and breathes fresh life into it – it’s sexy, it’s violent, and it’s pretty funny too. Centred around our loner […]
Darling (1965) The New Morality of the 1960s
Celebrating its sixtieth anniversary with a return to selected cinemas from May 30th and a Blu-ray release by Studio Canal’s Vintage Classics label on 16th June, Darling is John Schlesinger’s multi-Bafta and Academy Award winning 1965 starring the impossibly glamourous trio of Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, and Laurence Harvey. It […]
Ishanou (1990) Indian regional cinema probes the mystery of faith
Standard screenwriting advice has it that nothing confuses an audience faster than unclear character motivations, but some of the most powerful stories succeed by refusing to do exactly that. We never learn what made Daniel Plainview so embittered, or why Iago hates Othello, and nobody worth listening to would say […]
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964): Colourful But Lifeless Musical Drama
If you wanted to be mean, you could describe The Umbrellas of Cherbourg as what people who don’t like musicals think all musicals are like – big emotions, melodramatic story, characters singing all the time when they could just talk normally. On the flip side, it is also a musical […]
Andor Season 2 (2025) Round-up: Star Wars’ hard-to-swallow epic is just what fans needed
CONTAINS SPOILERS For once in their lives, Star Wars fans have a right to be upset. By the time any franchise devotees reach the end of Tony Gilroy’s ground-level Rebellion drama Andor, there’s a strong possibility they’ll feel more ashen than when they saw Princess Leia Mary Poppins herself back to safety in The […]
The Railroad Man (1956) A Year in the Life of a Working Class Family
The second Radiance release this week is Pietro Germi’s 1956 film The Railroad Man, or Il ferroviere in its native Italian. As well as directing and having a hand in the screenplay, Germi also stars in the lead role of Andrea Marcocci, the train operator of the title and patriarch of a working-class […]
Themroc (1973) The Urban Caveman and the Red Triangle
Released to Radiance this week is Claude Faraldo’s notorious 1973 French satire, Themroc, a film that gained its notoriety here in the UK on account of it being the first film broadcast in Channel 4’s Red Triangle season on 19th September 1986. The Red Triangle season was the informal title […]