Spring Blossom feels under-realized on the whole, but at least introduces a distinct authorial voice worth following. Part of the official selection at this year’s Cannes Film Festival that never was, Spring Blossom sees Suzanne Lindon, daughter of renowned French actors Vincent Lindon and Sandrine…
The Perfect Candidate keeps the stakes low and can be cloying at times, but its story is necessary. Haifaa Al-Mansour, whose 2012 feature debut Wadjda was the first film completely shot in Saudi Arabia (and became the nation’s first Oscar submission), returns with another…
Supernova is a restrained love story that manages to balance out the territory’s innate sentimentality. While actor-turned-director Harry Macqueen‘s debut film Hinterland utilized the premise of a road trip to chronicle a fractured, intimate relationship (earning fetching reviews from critics in the process), his follow-up,…
Herself is a well-intentioned but ultimately one-note message film that fails to build any real power. A patron of the British arts, Phyllida Lloyd’s transition from a director of theater to film could hardly have been more conspicuous. Her debut feature, Mamma Mia, set box-office…
Ammonite struggles to summon the visceral potency or emotional depth needed to tell its story. Three years on from Francis Lee’s terrific gay drama, God’s Own Country, and the director has moved on from the romantic union of two lusty male farmers to a 19th-century…
Divine Love is a frustrating, contemptuous affair that ultimately builds little depth into its religio-dystopic premise. Gabriel Mascaro’s Divine Love comes at a timely moment for Brazil. Recently-appointed President Jair Bolsonaro, a strong proponent of “traditional” family values and himself a former member of the…
BAFTA-nominated director Aleem Khan’s debut, After Love, has given a rare opportunity to Joanna Scanlan. Once known as a television actress, but more recently a mainstay character actress of British cinema, she stars as Mary, a woman living in Dover, who, after the death…
Archival footage of past conflicts between the North and South of Ireland accompany the opening credits of Irish director Cathy Brady’s politically-charged Wildfire, which addresses renewed fears that trouble could return to the Irish border in the wake of Brexit. This tension forms the…
Recent reports in the media that claim that the UK government is planning to house asylum seekers offshore come at a timely moment for Ben Sharrock, whose second feature, Limbo, charts the efforts of a Syrian refugee seeking access to Britain. Omar (Amir El-Masry)…
Rather strangely, Bassam Tariq’s Mogul Mowgli represents the second of two recent films in which Riz Ahmed plays a musician impacted by health problems. In the upcoming Sound of Metal (a 2019 festival circuit hit), Ahmed stars as a drummer struggling with the loss…
