First-look reviews
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Cosmic curiosities: umpteen highlights of Toronto’s 2018 Wavelengths showcase
TIFF’s experimental film and video programme was back on song this year with myriad experimental wonders from both masters and rising stars, writes Jordan Cronk.
Monday 1 October 2018 -
Mid90s first look: Jonah Hill’s heady skateboarding spin rides its teen whirlwind
Sunny Suljic’s pint-sized 13-year-old Stevie rolls with the kicks in Jonah Hill’s period drama on wheels, writes Ella Kemp.
Wednesday 26 September 2018 -
Her Smell first look: Elisabeth Moss plays a free falling rock star
Alex Ross Perry’s fictional punk biopic begins as a riot of viciousness, but as his heroine gets clean the film finds a stillness and purity that redeems it, writes Christina Newland.
Tuesday 25 September 2018 -
Beautiful Boy first look: the messy destruction of a father-son bond
Timothée Chalamet plays a young man who succumbs to meth addiction and Steve Carell his distraught dad in this touching character study, writes Katie Goh.
Tuesday 25 September 2018 -
Vita and Virginia first look: Bloomsbury’s Sapphic lovers get a fussy refit
Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki play 1920s free spirits Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf in Chanya Button’s sketchy adaptation of Eileen Atkins’ stage play, finds Katie Goh.
Tuesday 25 September 2018 -
The Land of Steady Habits review: Nicole Holofcener surveys the downwardly immobile
Nicole Holofcener’s mordant sixth feature takes its barbs at middle-class stupefaction straight to a couch-bound audience, finds Pamela Hutchinson.
Friday 21 September 2018 -
If Beale Street Could Talk first look: Barry Jenkins consecrates James Baldwin’s race-crossed lovers
Barry Jenkins’s rhapsodic adaptation of James Baldwin’s Harlem passion story finds reasons to swoon in the darkness, writes Sophie Monks Kaufman.
Wednesday 19 September 2018 -
Teen Spirit first look: Max Minghella embraces Elle Fanning’s pop dreams
Minghella’s directorial debut keeps the candle lit for Fanning’s surly Isle of Wight teen ingenue and her ambition for up and out, says Caitlin Quinlan.
Monday 17 September 2018 -
Wild Rose first look: Jessie Buckley follows her star
Buckley blazes bright as a young Glaswegian ne’er-do-well with a star-bound state of mind in Tom Harper’s unblinkered but cheerful wanderlust fable, writes Ella Kemp.
Friday 14 September 2018 -
Rosie first look: two days, one night incarnating Dublin’s housing crisis
Sarah Greene carries Paddy Breathnach’s Dardennian thriller as a newly evicted mother of four, send round in increasingly desperate circles by a heedless non-housing system, writes Pamela Hutchinson.
Friday 14 September 2018 -
Where Hands Touch first look: Amma Asante braves an interracial love story in the Nazi inferno
Amma Asante plunges into the late Third Reich with a precarious but determined story of a perilous passion between Amandla Stenberg’s bi-racial ‘Rhineland bastard’ and George MacKay’s Hitler Youth recruit, writes Pamela Hutchinson.
Thursday 13 September 2018 -
Maya first look: Mia Hansen-Løve watches a man in flight find a reason to stand
A freed hostage of war who absconds to Goa, Roman Kolinka is a soul unbound before Aarshi Banerjee’s winning Maya brings his life back in to focus in this tacit, ineffable Mia Hansen-Løve story, writes Sophie Monks Kaufman.
Thursday 13 September 2018 -
In Fabric first look: Peter Strickland’s killer dress call the shots
Peter Strickland’s exuberantly designed costume horror has dastardly ways to replenish its crimson accents; its critique of consumerist weakness is ruthless going on sadistic, finds Abbey Bender.
Wednesday 12 September 2018 -
High Life first look: Claire Denis floats Juliette Binoche and Robert Pattinson in mortal space
In French master Claire Denis’ off-planet but decidedly earthy English-language debut, Juliette Binoche plays a crazed scientist intent on harvesting the semen of Robert Pattinson’s monkish inmate on a prison-ship sent to extract the energy from black holes. What’s not to like, asks Simran Hans.
Tuesday 11 September 2018 -
Can You Ever Forgive Me? first look: building sympathy for a literary forger
Melissa McCarthy dials down her portrait of convicted celebrity-letter counterfeiter Lee Israel in Marielle Heller’s empathetic, shabby-chic New York expression of contorted creativity, says Abbey Bender.
Tuesday 11 September 2018 -
Mouthpiece first look: puzzling the pieces of a mother’s legacy
Patricia Rozema opens out Norah Sadava and Amy Nostbakken’s stage play of a woman’s interrogation of her relationship with her self-abnegating late mother, with the two actor-writers playing the lead role in tandem, says Pamela Hutchinson.
Tuesday 11 September 2018 -
Out of Blue first look: a cosmic film noir that fades to black
Carol Morley knocks Martin Amis’s Night Train into deep space, with Patricia Clarkson’s post-traumatic police detective following a murdered astrophysicist into an indubitably dark if questionably material place, finds Sophie Monks Kaufman.
Monday 10 September 2018 -
Fahrenheit 11/9 first look: Michael Moore reclaims American populism
Galvanised by the election of a demagogic monster to the seat of power, Michael Moore places the blame, prospects the consequences and exhorts the resistance, writes Tom Charity.
Monday 10 September 2018 -
Widows first look: Steve McQueen steals the heist genre
Steve McQueen floors it with a perfectly proportioned, whip-smart heist thriller, not least showcasing the talents of boss widow Viola Davis and henchman Daniel Kaluuya, writes Simran Hans.
Monday 10 September 2018 -
Shadow first look: Zhang Yimou doodles a wuxia intrigue
Zhang Yimou’s latest martial ballet leads on designer stylings including a novel colour palette, letting its Three Kingdoms courtiers be led by their plots, writes Tom Charity.
Monday 10 September 2018
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