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Next Best Picture •

"INTO THE JAWS OF THE OGRE" - Review

THE STORY – Filmmaker Mahsa Karampour reflects on the experiences of her
musician brother Siavash, as they make different lives for themselves far from their
native Iran.
THE CAST – Mahsa Karampour & Siavash Karampour
THE TEAM – Mahsa Karampour (Director/Writer) & Maya Haffar (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 86 Minutes
Iranian musician Siavash Karampour drives down a road while his sister (and the film’s director), Mahsa, films him. It’s a warm day in California. They pull up at a busy junction, wait...
Next Best Picture •

"ADIEU MONDE CRUEL" - Review

THE STORY – Otto Vidal, 14, disappeared after writing a farewell letter to his classmates. While everyone believes he is dead, Léna, a girl from his high school, spots him one night roaming the streets of the city.
THE CAST – Milo Machado-Graner, Jane Beever, Françoise Lebrun, Maïa Sandoz, Emmanuelle Destremau & Erwan Kepoa Falé
THE TEAM – Félix de Givry (Director/Writer) & Marie-Stéphane Imbert (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes
“Goodbye, cruel world!” It’s a wonderfully hyperbolic and evoc...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

The Black Ball (La Bola Negra) Film Review

The Black Ball is brilliantly made and heartfelt in its ambition, even if it can’t convey its characters’ passion as well as their suffering.


The Black Ball (La Bola Negra) is a pleasantly trickier proposition, at once more conventional and more subversive than its fellow Palme d’Or competitors. Its historical setting and reconciliation to tragedies past screams for trophies, but its era-spanning multiple narratives are burdened with breathtaking ambition. Writer-directors Javier Ambrossi and...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

The Man I Love Review: Crying When The Party’s Over

The Man I Love looks and sounds great, but Ira Sachs’ AIDS-era drama is almost sunk by Rami Malek’s affected lead turn.


If The Man I Love can’t quite land its emotional beats, it’s not for lack of trying to locate them in a fertile context. In late-1980s New York, AIDS is rampant, and among its victims is Malek’s flamboyant Jimmy George. The Reagan-era vilification of the victims of the AIDS epidemic lingers in the background of The Man I Love, but it’s not a piece of advocacy or a rabble-rou...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Interview: Lisandro Alonso & Misael Saavedra on Double Freedom

We interview writer-director Lisandro Alonso and actor Misael Saavedra about their new film Double Freedom (La Libertad Doble) at the Cannes Film Festival.


It’s been 25 years since Lisandro Alonso was nominated for the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival for his feature debut La Libertad (Freedom). A quarter of a century later we interview him at Cannes, where he’s returned with the unlikely sequel, Double Freedom (La Libertad Doble). Alonso’s work has made the Argentinian dir...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Hope (2026) Film Review: A Wild Ride

Forgive Hope its obvious flaws, and a ridiculously fun time will be had with Na Hong-jin’s creative creature feature.


Hope is intense, but it couldn’t be much less cerebral if it tried. Rarely is something so silly made with so much investment by cast and crew. Its flaws are readily apparent, but that makes it easier to overcome them, and just enjoy this perky but prolonged ride. Goodness knows why it’s in Competition, but a press corps left jaded by an otherwise lacklustre lineup to this poi...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Minotaur Review: Russia Caught In A Labyrinth

Writer-director Andrey Zvyagintsev returns angrier than ever with Minotaur, his latest excoriation of the authoritarian Russian state.


Scorsese doesn’t always make mobster pictures, and Spielberg isn’t always pining over absent fathers. Andrey Zvyagintsev, on the other hand, can be reliably depended upon to skewer the contemporary Russian political firmament with righteous anger. Minotaur, Zvyagintsev’s first feature since 2017’s Loveless, delivers almost exactly what you’d expect from the ex...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Paper Tiger Review: A Roar Worse Than Its Bite

Solid performances and filmmaking can’t shake the feeling of déjà-vu from Paper Tiger, James Gray’s latest New York-set crime thriller.


For all his evocation of classic Hollywood filmmakers, Gray is a more challenging writer-director than people realize. In many of his films (his crime thrillers especially), he throws us in with ragtag bunches of everymen who could lead perfectly happy lives if they’d just stop making stupid decisions. The protagonists of We Own The Night, The Yards and Littl...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Double Freedom (La Libertad Doble) Review

In Double Freedom, Lisandro Alonso reminds us of what a sequel should do, revisiting his earliest triumph while taking it in new directions.


Alonso’s methods have not changed much, but the Argentine filmmaker should be reassured that audiences are invested enough to see what will happen to his protagonist when he might be in some kind of trouble. As Misael chomps on a meaty limb, the black skies behind him light up with flashes of lightning. Dark clouds, both literal and metaphorical, are rol...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

The Beloved (El Ser Querido) Film Review

Javier Bardem is excellent in The Beloved (El Ser Querido), which works better as a portrait of behind the scenes on a film shoot rather than a father-daughter tale.


It’s not a winning strategy for rebuilding family ties, and it ends up leaving The Beloved disjointed, even if there’s so much else here that works quite well.


Javier Bardem channels his inner Coppola to play Esteban Martínez, a film festival-friendly Spanish director who’s returning to his homeland to make his first film ther...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

All of a Sudden (Soudain): Film Review

All Of A Sudden (Soudain) showcases Ryūsuke Hamaguchi in full-throated expression of his intelligence, optimism, and naïveté.


Hamaguchi sidesteps such accusations by keeping these chats real, and infusing them with warmth, ensuring that the time is well spent. All Of A Sudden (Soudain), his first film made outside Japan, tests the limits of his approach. It’s full of generous and intelligent characters that draw you towards them with their grace, but Hamaguchi is so enamoured with them that h...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Fatherland Review: Home Is Where The Heartbreak Is

Sandra Hüller shines in Fatherland, Paweł Pawlikowski’s latest gorgeous journey to find the people and places we call home.


Pawlikowski returns to features after Cold War won him Best Director at Cannes eight years ago, and Fatherland is all about going back to fertile ground, the loving bosom of lands that welcomed you once upon a time. The film opens with Mann’s son Klaus (August Diehl, of The Ice Tower) talking on the phone to his sister Erika (Sandra Hüller, of Anatomy of a Fall), making...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Parallel Tales Review: Paralysed Soap Opera

Parallel Tales’ top-notch cast can’t elevate Ashgar Farhadi’s would-be meta drama above its inherent sordidness.


This isn’t Farhadi’s first foray into filmmaking outside his native Iran, but something’s gone awry since 2018’s Everybody Knows. That film was solid enough to support strong work from Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, but Parallel Tales is too thin and emotionally obtuse to support the surplus of Francophone talent on its roster. The likes of Efira, Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Cas...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Tangles Film Review: Grief Through A Lens

With emotion in spades and a clever analysis of its own viewpoint, Tangles is a moving look at how a family responds to a terminal diagnosis.


“Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me” was published in 2010, and hailed as a remarkable empathetic look at degenerative disease from the point of view of those caring for the afflicted. Directed by Leah Nelson, the animated film adaptation of Tangles is faithful to Leavitt’s work and worldview, even if that faithfulness leaves it feeli...
HeadStuff •

The Christophers movie review | McKellen Excels In Soderbergh’s Art Vs. Commerce Dramedy - HeadStuff

Steven Soderbergh has had a remarkably productive couple of years. The Christophers is his third film in 18 months (Following Presence and Black Bag), and is handily his cosiest and most relaxed of the three. However, the eschewing of genre thrills and formal experimentation also makes it his least Soderberghian of the three. He may well feel that he doesn’t need to speak so loudly through his filmmaking when his lead characters, a pair of artists, are feeling many of the same feelings he is. He...
FILMHOUNDS Magazine •

Taxidermia (Blu-ray Review) - You Won’t Feel Hungary After This

A title like Taxidermia is a warning, and a fair one at that. György Pálfi’s 2006 satire is laser-focused on provocation. The craft of stuffing animals might sound horrifying to a casual passer-by, but it requires skill and craft to recreate living creatures in a lifelike pose. Taximdermia is full of downright offensive moments, but the whole thing is crafted with too much consideration and ability to be dismissed off-hand.
To be fair, taxidermy only takes up a portion of Taxidermia. Before that...
FILMHOUNDS Magazine •

Hi, Mom! (Blu-ray Review) - Uproarious Satire Still Leaves A Vicious Bite

Debates about the political merit and duty of art are as timeless as they are redundant.A viewer can read meaning into a film beyond the director’s intent. With Hi, Mom!, the never-understated Brian De Palma wants you to know exactly what he’s thinking, confronting the viewer with scandalous ideas, provocative imagery, and the limits of their own hypocrisy. Released in 1970, it squeezes more commentary, dark humour and insight into its 87 minutes than anything satirical could manage in twice tha...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Kokuho Film Review: In Pursuit of Greatness

A familiar tale of artistic endeavour is given time to breathe in Japanese box office smash Kokuho, with sumptuous design and strong performances.


Kokuho proves that stories of artistic striving and sacrifice translate well. Creatives have to give up so much to become the best at their art, no matter where they come from. 


Kokuho is a decent primer on kabuki, a ritualised form of theatre defined by stylised production and performances from all-male casts (Male actors playing women are know...
HeadStuff •

The Sheep Detectives movie review | Hugh Jackman stars in mediocre mutton mystery - HeadStuff

It’s so tempting to fill a review of The Sheep Detectives with farmyard puns, but that would involve more effort than can be found in the film itself. At every possible turn, Kyle Balda’s film dumbs down any chance at narrative edge; it’s too sheepish about being as memorable and interesting as it could and should have been. Adapted from Leonie Swann’s Three Bags Full, the conceit is simple enough. George (Hugh Jackman) is a sheep farmer who enjoys reading detective novels to his flock before be...
HeadStuff •

Mother Mary movie review | Hathaway does Madonna in hollow superstar meltdown - HeadStuff

It used to be that, in times of trouble, Mother Mary came to us speaking words of wisdom. Now, she arrives looking like Anne Hathaway caught in a downpour and approaching a nervous breakdown. Mother Mary is not lacking for compelling imagery but, for all its subverted religious imagery, writer-director David Lowery’s latest tale of a desperate search for identity is closer to “Jesus Christ” than “Yaaasss, kweeen”. 


Stabs at psychosexuality? Flirtations with violence? Award-tickling prestige?...
Loud And Clear Reviews •

Surviving Earth Review: Pain Is A Drug

With honesty, slick production and a terrific lead, Surviving Earth is a heartfelt and attention-grabbing feature debut for Thea Gajic.


This time is precious, a moment when life seemed good for Vlad, and people in general, free of international strife and a pervading sense of depression. As we learn, Vlad’s had his share of that. A veteran of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, Vlad came to Britain to improve his lot. Feature debut director Thea Gajic paints the world her lead inhabits in bright...
Philip Bagnall •

Couture

Couture opens with Maxine (Angelina Jolie) leaving Charles de Gaulle airport, suitcase lagging behind, smartphone to her ear, oblivious to the world around her. It’s a superstar entrance, but shorn of an entourage or curious passers-by. One could speculate that this is what Jolie imagines a normal passage through an airport looks like, but it’s hard to impart a sense of reality onto a scene in which one of the world’s most famous women swans through an international airport looking effortlessly...
HeadStuff •

The Wizard of the Kremlin movie review | The Rule Of Law Undermined In Shaky Political Drama - HeadStuff

It’s apt that The Wizard of the Kremlin centres on a theatre director and playwright, as its overwritten and overwrought nature means it would probably play best on stage. Rather than a stage play, director Olivier Assayas delivers a political drama of the kind he’s made before to mixed effect. The Wizard of the Kremlin is itself a mixed bag, though it’ll be interesting to revisit in years to come, to see how much of its power lies in its topicality. Explanations for Vladimir Putin’s continued m...
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