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Oscar Profile: Ralph Fiennes’ sheer diversity of characters

With a career spanning three decades, actor Ralph Fiennes has just received his third Oscar nomination. His role in Edward Berger’s ecclesiastical hit Conclave has impressed critics and audiences, and the nominations have been quick to follow. We may still think of Fiennes’ career high point as being the late 1990’s: Schindler’s List in 1994 and The English Patient in 1997 are still the films he is best known for, if we don’t count the recurring role of Voldemort in a certain franchise. But if we ... Continue Reading

Review: The Room Next Door – “zings with colour and vibrancy: as a counterpoint to the proximity of death”

At the age of 75, director Pedro Almodovar is still breaking new ground. In The Room Next Door, we have his first full-length feature in English. Taking its lead from Sigrid Nunez’s novel, What Are You Going Through, the film sees two friends reunite after years apart. Ingrid (played by Julianne Moore) is a writer living in New York. During a book signing, she bumps into a friend who mentions that their mutual acquaintance, war correspondent Martha (Tilda Swinton), is dying from cervical cancer. Ingrid goes to the hospital, and after a few visits, Martha asks Ingrid if she ... Continue Reading

“A textural, emotive documentary of a forgotten visionary” – A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things Review

In approaching the reputation and legacy of modernist painter, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, film-maker Mark Cousins makes it clear that conventional story-telling will not do. A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things is a textural, emotive documentary of an artist he calls – and with good reason – a “forgotten visionary”. Born in 1912, Barns-Graham lived and worked in St. Ives at the same time as Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, but her name threatened to disappear entirely in the later 20th century. While her early career saw success: her work was regularly exhibited in the 1950’s; the ... Continue Reading

Film Review: The Critic – “McKellen revels in the role of Queen Bee among London’s coterie of critics”

An actor famous for clapping back at critics, Ian McKellen’s latest role as [checks notes] a critic sounds like cinematic kismet. Directed by Anand Tucker, The Critic delivers on this tantalising premise. Immersed in the London theatre scene since his twenties, critic Jimmy Erskine (played by Ian McKellen) is now looking at the tail-end of his career. Lauded as an authority on contemporary theatre, Erskine has become a taste-maker: his gleefully malicious reviews can break a production. He lives with his assistant Tom (Alfred Enoch) on an expenses account that allows him to live “like a king”. The film begins with ... Continue Reading

Film Review: “John Singer Sargent – Fashion and Swagger”

Following fast on the heels of Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition, Exhibition on Screen again focuses on one of the year’s most talked-about art shows. Their film, John Singer Sargent: Fashion and Swagger, explores the Tate Britain and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s Sargent and Fashion. The show has already created headlines, with some art critics accusing the John Singer Sargent portraits, and some of the clothing featured in them, as being nothing more than a superficial glance at 19th century society and ... Continue Reading

Film Review: Your Fat Friend – “her truth bombs are dropped gently but decisively”

YOUR FAT FRIEND Just say “fat”. As an opening gambit, Jeanie Finlay’s documentary isn’t shy about throwing around the F word. Your Fat Friend doesn’t tiptoe around the issue of fatness, but approaches it unapologetically. A film that documents both individual and collective experience, Your Fat Friend is a fearless exploration (and explanation) of what it’s like living in a world not designed for you. The film’s focus is author and podcast presenter, Aubrey Gordon. Finlay follows Gordon over a six-year period as she negotiates her way through a publishing ... Continue Reading

Film Review: The Zone of Interest – “doesn’t just teach us about the past: it warns us not to repeat it.”

Anyone who visits the cinema regularly will know that finding a film that stays with you, long after the credits have rolled, is an increasingly rare experience. In Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest, the mark left on the audience is indelible. Loosely based on the Martin Amis novel, The Zone of Interest details the life of Commandant Rudolf Hoss, who oversees the running of the Auschwitz concentration camp. In a series of astonishing reveals, we learn that his spacious family home backs directly onto the camp ... Continue Reading

Film Review: Poor Things – “Stone’s performance is rightly worthy of an Oscar nomination”

A fantasy that blends science fiction with High Victoriana, Poor Things – a 1992 novel from Glaswegian author Alasdair Gray – seems a project tailor-made for director Yorgos Lanthimos. The story is mired in Gothic horror. A young Victorian woman – wealthy, well-dressed – stands on a bridge, contemplating the water below. She jumps to her death. A pioneering doctor, Godwin Baxter (played by Willem Dafoe), rescues the body from the river, and in a gleeful homage to classic cinema, we see the woman hooked up to electrodes and crudely (but successfully) resurrected. She is named Bella Baxter (Emma ... Continue Reading

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