Becoming Led Zeppelin: A documentary that plays the hits February 7, 2025 Becoming Led Zeppelin | star rating ★★☆☆☆ Cinema documentaries have become the place for the good and great of music to cement their legacy. From The Beatles to Bob Dylan, filmmakers have clamoured to get inside the people behind the tunes. This week, in Becoming Led Zeppelin, it’s the turn of the archetypal 70s rock [...]
Munich massacre drama September 5 is an ode to journalism February 6, 2025 The role of journalist in modern history is explored and celebrated in September 5, the Oscar-tipped drama set during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. It follows the crew of ABC Sports as they find themselves with a key vantage point to history, being able to get a live camera on the events that would [...]
The Colours Within film review: stunning and deceptively simple January 30, 2025 The Colours Within review and star rating: ★★★★ Japanese animation studio Science Saru may not be as recognised as Studio Ghibli, but they are perhaps best known in English language countries for their contributions to anthology series Star Wars: Visions. In The Colours Within the story follows Totsuko, a high school student who sees everything [...]
Hard Truths film review: Mike Leigh deserves Bafta nominations for this incredible return January 30, 2025 Hard Truths review and star rating: ★★★★ In Hard Truths Mike Leigh, one of Britain’s greatest living directors, reunites with actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste nearly thirty years after her cast her in the exceptional Secrets & Lies for a new hard-hitting drama. Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a wife and mother whose short temper barely covers deep-set depression [...]
Saturday Night review: Inside the mad origin story of Saturday Night Live January 30, 2025 Behind-the-scenes movies offering a glimpse behind famous moments in cultural history are having something of a moment. Some are great, like Mank’s dramatisation of the making of Citizen Kane in, and some are awful, like when Nicole Kidman donned horrifying prosthetics to play Lucille Ball in Being The Ricardos. This week, Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason [...]
The Brutalist review: A masterfully designed film January 24, 2025 As we head into Oscars season, one of the front runners this year is Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist. Already a Golden Globe winner, it is the director’s third and most ambitious feature following 2015’s The Childhood Of A Leader and 2018’s Vox Lux. That ambition has more than been realised. Adrien Brody plays László Tóth, [...]
Wolf Man review: A werewolf movie that lacks bite January 22, 2025 Universal seems to be determined to make its classic monster movies work for a new generation. After failed reboots in the 2000s and 2010s, some success was found just before the pandemic with Leigh Whannell’s thriller The Invisible Man, a modern, stripped-down take on the classic horror story. If it can work once, Hollywood will [...]
Presence review: Chiller where audience becomes the ghost January 22, 2025 While he made his name in the mainstream with the Magic Mike and Ocean’s Eleven films, Steven Soderbergh has experimented with genre and form in a number of smaller movies. In the horror genre, he made 2011’s frighteningly prescient pandemic horror Contagion, and delved into the darker corners of the mind with 2018’s Unsane. Now, [...]
Here film review: de-aged Tom Hanks can’t save soulless flop January 16, 2025 Robert Zemeckis is known for his love of cinema innovation, using motion capture to make Jim Carrey into Scrooge, or bring to life The Polar Express. In Here, he takes some of Hollywood’s biggest names through the different stages of life. It’s about a house, and the people who have lived on that spot, from [...]
Vermiglio review: Italian drama is a serious Oscar contender January 16, 2025 Vermiglio review and star rating: | ★★★★☆ With the Oscars on the horizon, Vermiglio will be hoping to make the cut as the Italian entry for Best International Feature. The title refers to a remote Italian village struggling to cope with the impact of the Second World War as it comes to an end. The family [...]
