Drama

A Story of Yonosuke

I almost let this one pass me by, put off by the daunting 160 minute runtime, but my efforts were handsomely rewarded as Okita Shuichi’s adaptation of Yoshida Shuichi’s popular… Read More
Citizen Kane

The first time I’ve seen Orson Welles’ mould-breaking classic on the big screen, and it looked as wonderful as ever. Not much to say that has not been said already,… Read More
So Young

Mainland actress Zhao Wei’s directorial debut has proved a huge hit on the mainland, and for 90 minutes of its over-long 130 minutes it is a charming story of young… Read More
Legend No.17

I am no kind of ice hockey fan, which should be evident from the fact I refer to it as “ice hockey”. But Legend No.17 was the opening film at… Read More
Smashed

Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul are both excellent in this low budget comedy drama from director James Ponsoldt. They play a young couple, very much in love, who both… Read More
Bullhead

I have been a huge champion of this film since first catching it at PiFan back in 2011. Michael R. Roskam’s directorial debut is a powerful crime epic, set in… Read More
Ernest & Celestine

Charming, if rather slight, French animation that pitches its story of acceptance, friendship and tolerance firmly at a young, impressionable audience. As a result, adults unfamiliar with the characters, who… Read More
Taste of Cherry

Pretty much epitomises what Abbas Kiarostami does so well – taking the mundane and making it profound. Homayoun Ershadi stars as a seemingly ordinary man driving around the hillsides on… Read More
To The Wonder

Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem and Rachel McAdams star in the latest film from Terrence Malick, but despite some luminescent photography, it proves an intolerable snoozefest. Read More
Medium Cool

Can’t say that I was especially blown away by Haskell Wexler’s docudrama that follows Robert Forster’s Chicago TV cameraman as he surveys the turbulent climate that builds to the 1968… Read More
Our Day Will Come

The debut feature from Romain Gavras is an angry, visually arresting drama starring Vincent Cassel and Olivier Barthelemy as frustrated, victimised red heads whose lives collide, and they head out… Read More
Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist

I’ve had a copy of this film sitting in a boxset entitled The Exorcist Complete Anthology for many years now, and never felt especially compelled to give it a watch… Read More
Rashomon

My favourite Kurosawa film, and quite possibly my favourite Asian film of all-time, this masterful morality play changed the language of cinema forever. Its revelation that narrators, performances, even the… Read More
The Great Gatsby

Baz Luhrmann takes an enthusiastic swing at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic of American literature, and while he never holds back on his trademark aesthetic of excess – even going so… Read More
Upstream Color

Shane Carruth follows up Primer with this confounding, beautiful and endlessly intriguing examination of memory, identity and relationships. Read More
REVIEW: Upstream Color

Shane Carruth follows up his impressive, confounding 2004 time-travel mindbender, Primer, with this equally ambitious science fiction thriller. Less easy to pigeonhole, Upstream Color is the story of a young… Read More
Therese Desqueyroux

Incredibly tedious and frustrating period drama from the late Claude Miller, in which Audrey Tautou plays the titular heroine, who is married off to a local landowner only to find… Read More
Ivan’s Childhood

Andrei Tarkovsky’s debut feature is on the one hand a fantastical escape from the horrors of war, but on the other a bleak, nightmarish vision of a young orphan faced… Read More