The plight of the auteur can be a tricky one indeed keeping to noticeable stylistic traits whilst introducing new ideas and avoiding diminishing returns and fan pressure. Wes Anderson’s dedication to working within his set parameters is something to be truly admired. That he is yet to release anything which has fallen below his high standards and worked across genres and audiences in doing so is startling. His ninth directorial feature: Isle of Dogs returns him to the stop-mo

It’d be fair to say that comedy is the most disparate genre. Easy, cynical cash-ins sit next to finely-honed scripts and box office takings tend to be fairly even regardless of quality. It’s particularly satisfying, then, when something comes along that looks for all the world like it should sit squarely in the former camp but is instead imbued with love, care and attention and leaves a lasting impression. Game Night is one such example. Taking a fairly unique premise (bizarr

The art-house take on a well-worn action, thriller or gangster trope often turns out to be one of the highlights of any given year in film. Free Fire was last year’s prime example and it seems, in recent times at least, to be a motion firmly put in place by the sublime Drive. You Were Never Really Here is Lynne Ramsay’s fourth directorial feature and comes six years after her last. This slow and methodical gap in time is an apt description of the film itself which is a haunti

Is it the end of the adventure film? For so long the bastion of blockbuster filmmaking and home to early classics but beaten out by its CGI-heavy relatives sci-fi, fantasy and, of course, the superhero in recent times. There’s still something nostalgic and homely about a well made action-adventure but all too often recently they’ve suffered critical malaise and dwindling box office fortunes. Last year’s Tom Cruise-led The Mummy being the latest big example (despite being a fu

Cartels are still trending high with movie and TV producers at the moment and we’ve seen some great gangster shows and films based on them. They provide the backdrop to what’s sure to be one of the sleeper-hit, cult favourites of the year: Gringo. The focus here is actually on the management of a pharmaceutical company using a Mexican lab to produce medical marijuana tablets, anticipating them being made legal in the US. Hapless everyman Harold and greasy managers Richard and

Let’s start this review boldly and say that Red Sparrow is exponentially better than the widely-middling critical consensus. Far more of a 'European Bond' than the much-touted 'Black-Widow-in-all-but-name', Francis Lawrence’s latest is another victim of poor marketing. The combination of Francis and namesake Jennifer Lawrence (no relation) has, thus far, led to huge success in the YA waters of The Hunger Games and the widespread press for this film has posited it as the begin

The last of the Best Picture nominations to make it to these shores (but, *spoiler alert*, didn’t win) is the much-heralded Lady Bird. Smashing Rotten Tomatoes records on release we’ve been forced to wait patiently for Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut. Lady Bird is a coming-of-age tale wrapped in a love letter to Sacramento, California. The titular Lady Bird is a self-given nom de plume of Christine, a college senior with our favourite coming-of-age hallmarks: a dysfunctional

It takes something truly special to upstage Spider-Man’s long-awaited integration into the MCU but that’s how I, and plenty of others, felt when we laid eyes on Black Panther way back when in Captain America: Civil War. The suit, the mysterious backstory and the promise of a future trip to Wakanda stood out in a film hardly short of stand-out moments. It’s been a long time coming, amid plenty of press furore, but we have the solo film we’ve been waiting for and the last piece

We haven’t had much luck recently when it comes to Young Adult trilogy closers. Since the triumphant close to the Harry Potter series the quality has significantly dipped from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay double-bill, which just felt a little lacklustre, to the Divergent series' final film Allegiant being completely cancelled altogether. The Maze Runner has posited itself as the closest competitor to The Hunger Games in recent times but itself ran into bad luck when it came t

There’s something about the dramatic tension and psychological depth you can wring from a movie about an individual sport. Team sports can be good fodder for comedy (Dodgeball, Cool Runnings) or back office drama (Moneyball) but are, more often than not, to be found in the bargain bins of the world whereas some of the greatest movies ever made centre on solo sports (see Raging Bull, Rocky, The Wrestler, Black Swan et al.) Whether biopics or fictional creations the plight of t

The Shape of Water leading the Oscar nominations was most likely a surprise to some on announcement. An old fashioned, romantic love story disguised as fantasy beating off competition from more prescient, ‘worthy’, political pieces seemed incongruous. Perhaps what the world needs though is a classic love story for the ages, which is exactly what Guillermo Del Toro has given us here in what is quite comfortably his best film since the immortal Pan’s Labyrinth. A thoroughly vin

Pixar’s releases can often feel like they crest a cultural wave. Toy Story set the benchmark for animation in the nineties and kickstarted its renaissance. The Incredibles predated the superhero boon and still stands as one of its best examples and Inside Out was a pioneering look at emotions and personality. Coco is the next to feel particularly prescient in the current climate. A treatise on death, family and remembrance deeply rooted in Mexican tradition and style and voic