By the close of the 1990s, Hollywood had developed a particular appetite for a certain kind of film: the suburban discontentment drama, polished and wry, wearing its cynicism about the American dream like a badge of sophistication. American Beauty, released in September 1999, arrived near the peak of that wave
Released in 1946 by RKO Radio Pictures, The Spiral Staircase arrived at a moment when Hollywood was finding its appetite for shadows. The postwar years had produced a run of crime pictures and psychological thrillers that leaned into moral ambiguity and visual darkness, and this film sits comfortably within that
Horror cinema has always been a useful vehicle for anxieties that polite conversation tends to avoid, and The Babadook arrived in 2014 wearing that tradition proudly. Written and directed by Jennifer Kent, it is an Australian production brought together through a collaboration between Causeway Films, Screen Australia, the South Australian
Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts comic strip ran from October 1950 until February 2000, the final instalment published the day after Schulz himself died. Over those five decades it became one of the most widely syndicated strips in history, appearing in thousands of newspapers across dozens of countries and
There is a quiet ambition to Elephants in the Fog, Abinash Bikram Shah's feature, that I found genuinely stirring. It is a real landmark for Nepalese cinema and a valuable addition to the LGBTQ conversation in Asia, and while a couple of things hold it back from the
Yokohama, 1963. Japan is preparing to host the following year's Olympic Games, a moment freighted with national pride and a quiet, collective desire to draw a line under the devastation of the Second World War. It is into this particular atmosphere of forward momentum and unresolved memory that
Ghost World arrived in 2001 at an interesting moment for American independent cinema, when a small wave of adaptations from alternative comics were making their way onto screens with varying degrees of fidelity to their source material. This one draws from Daniel Clowes's serialised comic of the same
There is a good short film somewhere inside The Animals, and a strong cast doing their best to find it, but Calvin Demba's eighteen-minute piece never quite gets there. It has a sharp premise and some real talent on screen, yet it states its point so bluntly,
There is a particular category of Hollywood blockbuster that exists not so much to tell a story as to fulfil a transaction: you hand over your ticket money, the studio hands back explosions, a recognisable face, and the vague shape of a plot. Rampage (2018) sits squarely in that tradition.
Every so often a short film comes along that is so beautiful to look at that the usual criteria start to feel almost beside the point, and Into the Forest, Antonin Niclass's stop-motion short film, is one of those. I watched it at the BFI London Film
There is a genuinely intriguing moral knot at the centre of How to Hide It, the short film co-written and co-directed by Ramla Ali and Richard A. Moore, and for thirteen minutes it packs in a surprising amount of story. I caught it at the BFI London Film
In the spring of 1944, with the war visibly turning against the Third Reich, Nazi forces moved with extraordinary speed to deport the Jews of Hungary. It was one of the most rapid mass deportations in the history of the Holocaust, and it came at a point when the rest
Rating: 3.0★
There are films that arrive carrying the full weight of critical consensus behind them, and Annie Hall is one of the heaviest. Released in 1977 by United Artists, through the production banner of Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe, it took the Best Picture Oscar that year and remains the
Country Belgium
There is a very good film somewhere inside Heysel 85, and for long stretches you can see it in the craft alone. Yet for all its technical brilliance, Teodora Ana Mihai's dramatisation of one of football's darkest nights left me strangely unmoved, and that is a
Rating: 3.5★
The original 1992 Candyman, based on Clive Barker's short story "The Forbidden" and directed by Bernard Rose, is one of those horror films that transcended its genre almost immediately. It lodged itself in the cultural imagination in a way that very few films manage: the dare,
Country Jamaica
Now and again a short film comes along that seems to speak directly to you, and FarEye, Hayden McLean's beautiful short film, was exactly that for me. I caught it at the BFI London Film Festival, and as someone who follows the teachings of Haile Selassie myself, the
Rating: 4.0★
The Appalachian Trail has a particular hold on the American imagination. Running roughly 2,190 miles from Georgia to Maine, it has generated a small but persistent strand of storytelling, from Bill Bryson's wry memoir to Cheryl Strayed's rather more harrowing account of the Pacific Crest
Rating: 3.0★
By 1967, Hollywood was in the middle of an identity crisis it could not quite name. The old studio system was crumbling, European art cinema was bleeding across the Atlantic, and a generation of filmmakers was working out what American genre pictures could look like if you dismantled them from
2020s
Some shorts are over before you have really had the chance to take their measure, and Last Minute is one of them. Sam Brain's five-minute piece sets up an intriguing, charged little situation and then ends almost the moment it gets going, leaving me genuinely unsure what
Rating: 3.0★
There are films that arrive trailing so much reputation that the act of watching them becomes almost secondary to the weight of what you already know. On the Waterfront is one of those films. Released in 1954 by Columbia Pictures and Horizon Pictures, it tells the story of Terry Malloy,
Country India
There is a quietly radical premise at the heart of Aman, Rahul Roye's short film, and for the most part it handles it with real tenderness and grace. I watched it at the BFI London Film Festival and found it a beautiful, touching and genuinely challenging piece of
country-uk
Every so often a short film comes along with a performance at its centre so good that it carries you past any reservations you might have, and Untitled Woman, Camille Summers-Valli's elegant short film, is very nearly that. I caught it at the BFI London Film Festival
country-uk
There is a very particular pleasure in a short film that knows exactly what it is and does it well, and A Twist of Hate, Madeleine Shenai's nine-minute short film, is a neat little example. I caught it at the BFI London Film Festival, and while it
country-palestine
Some films do not have time to ease you in, and To the North, Amer Nasser's short film, does not try. It runs only around eight minutes, and in that time it delivers a gut punch that stayed with me long after the screen had gone dark. I
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