Philip Bagnall

Reviews

Loud And Clear Reviews •

It Was Just an Accident Review: Road Rage

Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident captures the anger of a nation under a repressive jackboot with suspense and humanity.


Even if Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche had not been a vocal advocate of Panahi’s for many years, the choice of It Was Just an Accident for the Palme d’Or couldn’t help but be read as political. Panahi’s films are inherently political, even though he does his utmost to fold those instincts into a narrative with an eye to reaching the masses. (W...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Resurrection Review: Dreaming When We’re Awake

Bi Gan’s Resurrection is an ambitious and evocative tribute to cinema through the ages. Just don’t expect it to make much sense.


Gan’s previous feature Long Day’s Journey Into Night was a challenge to our perception of memory, but Resurrection might be an even more ambitious beast. 


The opening text of Resurrection tries to make sense of what’s to come. In an alternate reality, humans have achieved immortality by learning how not to dream. Of course, there are holdouts who continue to ente...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Sound of Falling Review: Haunted House Story

With her uber-confident second feature film Sound of Falling, director Mascha Schilinski artfully dissects the 20th century in Germany.


Sound of Falling opens on Erika (Lea Drinda) hobbling down a hallway in her family home with a pair of crutches. Luckily, the leg she appears to be missing is revealed to be intact, and the crutches belong to her amputee uncle Fritz (Martin Rother). Schilinski lets us imagine Fritz lost the leg in the war (Either one), and lets Erika develop a quasi-erotic fa...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Eleanor the Great Review: Queen of Manhattan

June Squibb is a hilarious delight in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut Eleanor the Great, helping it overcome contrived plotting.


Eleanor the Great offers her another great leading role, but it has similar problems to Thelma with its script, leaving Squibb to do a lot of heavy lifting.


Despite Squibb’s leading role, the biggest name on Eleanor the Great’s poster is bound to be Scarlett Johansson. Making her directorial debut, the erstwhile Black Widow seeks to create a tribute to her...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Sentimental Value Review: Dad’s Girls on Film

Joachim Trier delivers another portrait of modern familial angst with honesty and self-awareness in Cannes highlight Sentimental Value.


By the time Joachim Trier’s film arrived to the Croisette, every critic, industry rep and unpaid intern had spent the previous nine days fretting over ticket shortages, exhausting themselves to make room in their sleep-deprived schedule for more writing, and worrying they’re not good enough to be here because they missed a deadline. In that context, Sentiment...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Highest 2 Lowest Review: Spike Does Kurosawa

In adapting one of Kurosawa’s finest films, Highest 2 Lowest sees Spike Lee at his most introspective and fun. A$AP Rocky steals the show.


Lee has been here before; his remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy was criticized for being as unnecessary as it was generic. The 68-year-old director has clearly learned a few lessons from that debacle. With Highest 2 Lowest, he doesn’t reinvent the wheel, keeping the plot largely intact. However, he does put his own stamp on the material, giving us a colour...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

The History of Sound Review: A Familiar Tune

Despite some fine performances, Oliver Hermanus’ The History of Sound is too unfocused and lacking in bite to stay in the memory.


Oliver Hermanus’ The History of Sound fits nicely into that role, even casting two stars with experience in this subgenre. When Paul Mescal (All Of Us Strangers) and Josh O’Connor (God’s Own Country) meet by a piano in a Boston bar in 1917, you already know that they can’t be together. The only question is how they’ll be parted. The History of Sound adheres to the...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

The Secret Agent Review: On The Run In Brazil

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent is a sharp and complex thriller, with a fantastic lead performance from Wagner Moura.


The Brazilian director’s work is as professional as you like, but it has a subversive streak, twisting genre convention on its head. The Secret Agent is no different; it sounds like a thriller, but ends up in all kinds of modes depending on the scene, from hangout movie to horror. This may irritate some, and confuse others, but the exhilaration of the film comes from...
Next Best Picture •

“ORWELL: 2+2=5” - Review

THE STORY – Explores the life and career of George Orwell, particularly the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
THE CAST – Damian Lewis
THE TEAM – Raoul Peck (Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 119 Minutes
Big Brother is everywhere. This is not just the premise of George Orwell’s seminal dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” it’s also a statement of fact. The ideas contained in Orwell’s book have entered the public consciousness with an efficacy and efficiency that the authoritarian leader Big Brother himse...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Sirât Review: Sun, Sand and Salvation

Confrontational but contemplative, Oliver Laxe’s Sirât is a brilliantly energetic and well-crafted take on the long night of the soul.


By the end of the film, seven people will be broken and bonded by their shared experiences, and that’s not a reference to anything they might have dropped at a festival. Family is expected to survive through thick and thin, but no trip at a festival can compare to the roadtrip being taken in Sirât. 


The title and opening text of the film offer our first war...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Left-Handed Girl Review: It’s Not Mother’s Day

With energy and empathy, Shih-Tsing Chou tells a tale of women’s hard graft in Left-Handed Girl, a triumph for its co-writer/director and cast.


However, her accompanying daughters, late-teen dropout I-Ann (Shih-yuan Ma) and precocious little I-Jing (Nina Yeh) are the ones who will learn that such moves are driven by the grind of capitalistic labor, and the oft-stifling bonds of tradition. Such things can be made to work in a person’s favour, but on the surface this matriarchal family unit see...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Bono: Stories of Surrender Film Review

The U2 frontman proves an inscrutable subject in Andrew Dominik’s slick but unrevealing concert confessional Bono: Stories of Surrender.


As renowned for his work as an anti-poverty campaigner as he is for his distinctive tenor voice, Bono tries hard to work for others, and yet can’t shake off the stench of ego. A lavish lifestyle, aided in part by clever accounting and tax shelters, explains some of the antagonism towards him. Then again, many an Irish person will tell you begrudgery is a nat...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Arco Film Review: Looking to the Future with Hope

Arco may not be very original in its look or plot, but it brims with potent emotionality and a refreshing sense of optimism.


A young girl living in a 2075 filled with hovercars and robot manual labor chases a moving rainbow to find a visitor from the even more distant future lying at the end of it. Arco walks a fine line between sci-fi and fantasy, but it works.


It’s easy to spot the influences on an animated movie; the very style of a given film is the greatest hint as to whom the directo...
Next Best Picture •

"AMRUM" - Review

THE STORY – Amrum Island, spring 1945. Nanning is a 12-year-old boy who goes seal hunting, fishing at night and toils in the fields to help his mother feed the family. When peace is declared, completely new conflicts arise, and Nanning must learn to find his own way.
THE CAST – Diane Kruger, Laura Tonke, Jasper Billerbeck, Detlev Buck, Lisa Hagmeister & Matthias Schweighöfer
THE TEAM – Fatih Akin (Director/Writer) & Hark Bohm (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes
Are two films enough to declare...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning Review

Overlong, overcomplicated, but never really over, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning sees the franchise fuse burn out with a whimper.


Any plotting in these films was an excuse for Cruise’s Ethan Hunt to get into increasingly ridiculous situations and stunts, cheered on by the finest team assembled by the IMF (Sad to say Christine La Garde does not make a cameo). Alas, that simplicity of concept is now gone, replaced by the modern franchise urge to tie everything together, no matter how...
Next Best Picture •

"ENZO" - Review

THE STORY – Follows a 16-year-old boy who defies his bourgeois family’s expectations by starting a masonry apprenticeship where he meets a charismatic Ukrainian colleague who shakes up his world.
THE CAST – Eloy Pohu, Maksym Slivinskyi, Pierfrancesco Favino & Élodie Bouchez
THE TEAM – Robin Campillo (Director/Writer), Laurent Cantet & Gilles Marchand (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 102 Minutes
Auteur theory dictates that a singular creative voice is responsible for a film. This is something that “E...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Motel Destino Review: A Little Slice of Purgatory

Karim Aïnouz’s Motel Destino is a sexy and colourful little crime thriller. It’s not going to engage the brain too deeply, but it’s a lot of fun.


It has a colourful, campy vibe that’s at odds with the narrative’s plot of deceit and backstabbing, but it makes the film more memorable and enjoyable than it otherwise would have been. It may be chewing gum for the eyes, but it sure is tasty.


Iago Xavier plays Heraldo, a low-ranking lieutenant in a criminal gang. He wants out of this life, but n...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Neighborhood Watch Review: A Bungled Kidnap

A buddy cop movie without buddies or cops, Neighborhood Watch relies on two charismatic leads to keep its undercooked and uninvolving plot going.


Directed by Duncan Skiles, who successfully plunged into murky crime drama with The Clovehitch Killer, this new movie tries to blend elements of that serial killer thriller with some ‘buddy cop’ antics and a race against time, but to uneven effect. 


The mismatched cops trope has often been a pathway to box office gold, but a new spin is needed to...
HeadStuff •

Sinners Movie Review | Ryan Coogler's Bloody Crowdpleaser Lacks A Little Bite - HeadStuff

Looking at his filmography up to this point, you can see why writer-director Ryan Coogler would wish to make something as self-contained as Sinners. Ever since his breakout feature debut Fruitvale Station, he’s been hemmed in by the demands of franchises. Creed was anything but rocky, but the Black Panther movies saw him juggling the demands of franchise worldbuilding, not to mention the cruelty of fate, while struggling to make his own voice heard. Sinners should be just the vehicle to do that....
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Black Bag Review: Do You Take This (Hit)Man?

A classy cast and slick filmmaking mark Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh’s tale of married spies, as a wickedly fun dissection of fidelity.


A mere two months later, Soderbergh unveils Black Bag. His new spy thriller sees the director back on narratively familiar turf in the vein of Haywire, but where that film offered unfiltered action setpieces with minimal commentary, Black Bag’s delights are more psychological, marrying Agatha Christie high concepts to deep distrust that’s more Edward Albee th...
HeadStuff •

Mickey 17 Movie Review | R-Patz and Bong Joon Ho are Lost in Space - HeadStuff

When writer-director Bong Joon Ho took home four Oscars with Parasite, it was perceived as a breaking of the language barrier. The little box of subtitles at the bottom of the screen needn’t be a hindrance to cinematic entertainment, or so the new wisdom went. The irony is that his following film, Mickey 17, proves that point in the opposite direction. It’s in English, filled with notable names, and boasts the visual scale with which Bong’s most ambitious projects are associated. However, it rar...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

The Rule of Jenny Pen Review: Elder Abuse Horror

Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow are terrific in The Rule of Jenny Pen, James Ashcroft’s playful and intelligent tale of abuse and deceit.


Such castings are also recognition that these scripts offer some of the most upfront thematic tests to actor and audience alike. In The Rule of Jenny Pen, two garlanded old hands jump into an existential nightmare with effectively creepy and oddly moving results. Kiwi writer-director James Ashcroft feels no need to move the story from his and source author O...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Cleaner Film review: Needs Cleaning Up

Cleaner wastes some good actors, a fine director and a meagre budget on a script that shamelessly rips off Die Hard at every turn.


That extends to the cast and crew; there’s just no passion or energy to anyone’s efforts here.


To be fair to the filmmaking team behind Cleaner, you gotta make bank. For example, after years of exploring galaxies far, far away, Daisy Ridley has segued into more interesting smaller-scale fare, like Sometimes I Think About Dying and Young Woman and the Sea. These...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Suze Review: A Full Heart With an Empty Nest

Suze is a sharp and charming story of a woman finding meaning in unlikely places. Two game lead performances deliver the laughs.


Perhaps the freshness of Suze lies in its setting. Tropes of comedies (Teen comedies especially) often come from societal conventions. While most comedies aiming for mainstream connection borrow from their American kin, this is a Canadian production through and through. Shot in Ontario, and starring mostly Canadians (Watkins being the exception), Suze is refreshingl...
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