Guardian

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating Title/Year Author
4/5 () Charles Bramesco For Finlay... allowing McConnell to use his own words makes sense of a complicated process fraught with contradictions and paradoxes even for those not contending with a total destabilization of their personhood. EDIT
Posted Apr 28, 2019
3/5 () Peter Bradshaw There's a glow of nostalgia and sadness around this heartfelt, if patched together, documentary tribute to HandMade Films. EDIT
Posted Apr 26, 2019
2/5 () Leslie Felperin This low-budget British effort throws comedy, drama, tired psychological thriller conceits and some broad satire to make a bag about as mixed as they come. EDIT
Posted Apr 26, 2019
4/5 Luce (2019) Benjamin Lee It's a drama that moves like a thriller with a stark, uncomfortable score and a series of seat-edge confrontations both heating up a difficult debate over trust, expectation and racial stereotypes. EDIT
Posted Apr 26, 2019
2/5 Beyond the River (2017) Phil Hoad Unlike the protagonists, the film refuses to dig deep and never achieves a thematic head of steam. EDIT
Posted Apr 26, 2019
4/5 Styx (2018) Mike McCahill Fischer literalises the turbulence we're now navigating, and asks some stern questions of our moral compasses. EDIT
Posted Apr 26, 2019
2/5 () Cath Clarke There are some decent gags and funny scenes, although I'm not sure the film-makers bothered studying cats before creating their bland feline heroine. Where's the disdain? The attention seeking? The torture of smaller animals for fun? EDIT
Posted Apr 25, 2019
4/5 The World Is Yours (2018) Phil Hoad A brash and jubilant Guy Ritchie-style crime caper. EDIT
Posted Apr 25, 2019
3/5 Breaking Habits (2018) Leslie Felperin A little more nuance and historical depth would have been welcome, but this will be serviceable entertainment when it gets to streaming, as long as viewers have a supply on hand. EDIT
Posted Apr 25, 2019
3/5 Bel Canto (2018) Cath Clarke It's overripe and improbable, but you'd need a flinty heart to resist the message of solidarity, that if you spend time with someone, anyone, you'll find common ground. EDIT
Posted Apr 25, 2019
3/5 () Cath Clarke A bit of an uneventful slog. EDIT
Posted Apr 25, 2019
3/5 The Dig (2018) Mike McCahill With admirable economy the Tohills and screenwriter Stuart Drennan establish a stand-off between men in small, dark holes who have sublimated all feeling into obsessive, possibly futile activity. EDIT
Posted Apr 25, 2019
4/5 Maborosi (1995) Peter Bradshaw It is a sombre and painful drama, enacted with reserve. EDIT
Posted Apr 24, 2019
2/5 Celeste (2018) Luke Buckmaster Celeste lacks vitality; it lacks energy. There are times when one wants to grab the film and shake it to life. EDIT
Posted Apr 24, 2019
4/5 Eighth Grade (2018) Peter Bradshaw Elsie Fisher is absolutely outstanding in the role of Kayla Day, like an undiscovered Fanning sister: her smart, observant performance gives the audience instant access to her vulnerabilities, hurt feelings and quiet determination. EDIT
Posted Apr 24, 2019
5/5 Avengers: Endgame (2019) Peter Bradshaw I have to admit, in all its surreal grandiosity, in all its delirious absurdity, there is a huge sugar rush of excitement to this mighty finale, finally interchanging with euphoric emotion and allowing us to say poignant farewells. EDIT
Posted Apr 23, 2019
5/5 () Rebecca Nicholson Climate Change: The Facts should not have to change minds, but perhaps it will change them anyway, or at least make this seem as pressing as it needs to be. EDIT
Posted Apr 19, 2019
3/5 Kalank (2019) Mike McCahill A superlative piece of technical craft, one that rolls off several of the year's most beauteous shots. EDIT
Posted Apr 19, 2019
3/5 Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018) Leslie Felperin A reasonably competent, mildly amusing monster mash. EDIT
Posted Apr 19, 2019
2/5 () Leslie Felperin If the intended audience for this is people who like true crime books with retro cover art then this will probably scratch their itch. But it's not hard to see that the budget was modest and spread as thin as it possibly could be. EDIT
Posted Apr 19, 2019
1/5 Wheely (2018) Cath Clarke They might as well have called it Carz. EDIT
Posted Apr 19, 2019
5/5 Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé (2019) Jake Nevins Beyoncé, queen she may be, doesn't ask us to bend the knee. Homecoming is about the collective. It's about the experience of viral, transitory togetherness for which musical festivals are one of the last remaining conduits. EDIT
Posted Apr 18, 2019
2/5 Let There Be Light (2017) Cath Clarke Everyone here emotes like they're acting in an electric toothbrush ad. EDIT
Posted Apr 18, 2019
2/5 Someone Great (2019) Jake Nevins There's potential here for a kind of zeitgeisty farce... and yet Someone Great manages to undermine its capacity for novelty at almost every turn, remaining sadly compliant with the beats of the genre it seeks to uproot. EDIT
Posted Apr 18, 2019
4/5 The Goonies (1985) Peter Bradshaw The Goonies has a rich and indomitable air of all-American innocence... EDIT
Posted Apr 18, 2019
1/5 A Dark Place (2018) Peter Bradshaw This is a perfectly decent premise for a procedural thriller and Scott does his best to sell it. But some of the plot turns are preposterous and gibberingly ridiculous. EDIT
Posted Apr 18, 2019
3/5 Greta (2018) Peter Bradshaw Huppert should be the next Bond villain. EDIT
Posted Apr 18, 2019
Threads (1984) Peter Bradshaw The only film I have been really and truly scared and indeed horrified by - in an intense and sustained way - is Mick Jackson's post-nuclear apocalypse movie Threads. EDIT
Posted Apr 17, 2019
2/5 Red Joan (2018) Peter Bradshaw Quite simply, there is not enough Dench, not enough Old Joan, not enough about how she feels about the decades of deceit, and tension, and becalmed ordinariness, far from the drama of espionage. EDIT
Posted Apr 17, 2019
4/5 Dragged Across Concrete (2018) Peter Bradshaw This is a long film, but there is something so horribly compelling about its unhurried slouch towards the precipice. EDIT
Posted Apr 17, 2019
3/5 Loro (2018) Peter Bradshaw Sometimes whimsical, sometimes gruellingly sordid, sometimes wayward in those Fellini-esque departures and dreamlike epiphanies of which Sorrentino has made himself such a master. EDIT
Posted Apr 17, 2019
The Lost Prince (2003) Mark Lawson The Lost Prince, along with Shooting the Past and Perfect Strangers, also represents Poliakoff's contribution to the changing form of television drama. EDIT
Posted Apr 15, 2019
3/5 () Luke Buckmaster A credible and interesting film with compelling ideas. EDIT
Posted Apr 15, 2019
3/5 Guava Island (2019) Jake Nevins Its message is noble, its vistas handsome and vibrant. But the film doesn't quite meet the exceptionally high bar Glover has set for himself. EDIT
Posted Apr 15, 2019
2/5 Wonder Park (2019) Mike McCahill You and your children will have sat through many worse films that took far easier routes to the screen - which is not to say that Wonder Park is not immediately forgettable. EDIT
Posted Apr 12, 2019
5/5 Life of Brian (1979) Peter Bradshaw Life of Brian is an unexpectedly earnest, sweet-natured hymn to the idea of tolerance. EDIT
Posted Apr 12, 2019
3/5 Amazon Adventure (2017) Mike McCahill The film sets about its task in the same spirit of wide-eyed wonder as its subject, using movie art to bolster its science, and thereby retooling the Imax screen to serve as a high-powered microscope. EDIT
Posted Apr 12, 2019
3/5 Mid90s (2018) Peter Bradshaw Hill has come up with an accomplished and watchable film in this style, nearly a pastiche... EDIT
Posted Apr 12, 2019
3/5 Sky and Ground (2017) Cath Clarke It works because more than anything it's portrait of a family who are funny, full of warmth and possess a miraculous ability to rustle up a cheese and pitta feast on the side of a hill. EDIT
Posted Apr 11, 2019
3/5 Yuli (2018) Cath Clarke What's perhaps surprising given the insider involvement from Acosta is the film's insight and emotional generosity that extends even to overbearing Pedro. EDIT
Posted Apr 11, 2019
3/5 A Deal With the Universe (2018) Peter Bradshaw What it arguably loses in discipline and focus... it gains in emotional openness. EDIT
Posted Apr 11, 2019
2/5 Hellboy (2019) Peter Bradshaw For all the badass attitude and the CGI mini-apocalypses he strides through, this Hellboy is lacking. He is more of a Heckboy: a banal action-movie figure without the unexpected likability of his previous iteration. EDIT
Posted Apr 11, 2019
2/5 The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018) Leslie Felperin This is an elaborate Dadaist joke, the funniest part of which is that it's not in the least bit funny. EDIT
Posted Apr 10, 2019
2/5 Little (2019) Peter Bradshaw The comedy is fundamentally hobbled by the split in narrative focus between Jordan and April. We are never sure who is the heroine here, who has the comedy underdog status, who we are supposed to be rooting for. EDIT
Posted Apr 10, 2019
3/5 Wild Rose (2018) Peter Bradshaw This is a sentimental, faintly unreal story: very well sung. EDIT
Posted Apr 10, 2019
1/5 The Silence (2019) Charles Bramesco This is the most insidious type of knockoff: the one that sincerely expects you to believe that it's the real thing. Leave it to Netflix to take the fun out of incompetence. EDIT
Posted Apr 10, 2019
() David Stubbs Ray McAnally is superb as Perkins, the embodiment of every red-blooded Labour supporter's wishful thinking: the "if only" candidate of their dreams. EDIT
Posted Apr 9, 2019
3/5 () Andrew Pulver There may be too much to cover satisfactorily, but Mansoor's film has an impressive try. EDIT
Posted Apr 9, 2019
3/5 Waiting: The Van Duren Story (2018) Adam Stafford Duren's [story] is fascinating and sad, albeit familiar to anyone versed in the unjust world that is the record business. EDIT
Posted Apr 8, 2019
4/5 () Lucy Mangan The programme wisely decided to keep out of the way and gave us an hour that was all the more moving for its spareness. EDIT
Posted Apr 8, 2019