I am in a complete minority. Critics are raving about Wes Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch, but I found it boring (to the point of nodding off even without having had a drink) and utterly self-indulgent.
Lyna Khoudri, Francis McDormand and Timothée Chalamet
Framed as a tribute to The New Yorker and the good old days […]

I’m not usually a sci-fi fan, but to be honest I wasn’t aware that this is a futuristic film – I was swept away by Dan Stevens looking alluring (those eyes!) on the posters. Set in Berlin, Alma (prize-winning Maren Eggert) is a feisty archaeologist desperate to achieve more funding for her work. The quid […]

I don’t really know why I agreed to see this film: one, I don’t like comedies, or romances and, two, this is a time-loop  movie, another genre I find rather irritating. Persuaded by good reviews in the press I give it a go. The action takes place in one never-ending, but frequently beginning, day at […]

Don’t be put off by the rather silly English  title of this French film (Antoinette dans les Cevennes)  starring Call My Agent’s Laure Calamy (Noémie) whose character is largely unchanged from the voluptuous loyal mistress of that series. Here she is Antoinette Lapouge, having an affair with fellow teacher, Vladimir (Benjamin Lavernhe), whose daughter is […]

This is Rosamund Pike as you’ve never seen her before. In I care a lot she plays an amoral glamorous business woman who specialises in slapping care orders on elderly and confused people thus gaining control of the their lives, and more importantly, their wealth. Once you’ve got past the distasteful premise (true by the way […]

 The Bridesmaids are back! Comic actor and writing duo Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig return to the big screen a comic caper designed to lift us out of lockdown gloom. Recently redundant sadly single sofa-saleswomen and besties decide spend their pay-out on a lifetime dream trip to Vista del Mar, a completely OTT Florida […]

This is an adaptation of Grímur Hákonarson’s 2015 lauded Icelandic film. I didn’t see that but Jeremy Sims brings some good old Icelandic dourness to the magnificent western Australian outback in this reimagination. Two brothers, Colin (Sam Neill) and Les (Michael Caton) live side-by-side on the family farm but have not spoken for 40 […]

This is a re-make of a Belgian film Hasta La Vista ‘based on a true story’ about a British disabled man, Asta Philpott, who went to Amsterdam in search of sex to suit his ‘special needs’. Apart from the similar plot-line centering on the road trip undertaken by three young men to a Montreal brothel […]

This is a must-see for anyone who has ever lived through their children’s teenage years. Adapted from the 2012 graphic novel by Joff Winterhart and directed by Inbetweeners actor Simon Bird (Will) in his debut, it tells the story of an interminable summer experienced by an archetypal odd couple.

Daniel (Earl Cave) lives with his librarian mum Sue […]

Lulu Wang’s film is extraordinary on many levels. Too Asian to get US funding; not American enough with no American characters to get Chinese funding (Crazy Rich Asians bombed in China). Wang had difficulty getting funding until Christopher Weisz came along. But she stuck to her guns in this autobiographical cross-cultural story about a Chinese American […]