Lockdown obviously brought out memories for some filmmakers. Kenneth Branagh took us to his hometown in Belfast, while Sam Mendes told us tales of his mother and his love of cinema with Empire of Light. Now Steven Spielberg has joined this new cinematic universe with The Fabelmans, a fictionalized account of the director’s early years…
Tag: drama
The Whale
It is one of the most talked about movies of the year. It has given a former Hollywood star his best role in years. It’s from a director who often produces controversial and diversive films. It has been lauded with awards and award nominations. Yet does it manage to match the hype? Is it the…
Babylon
I am a huge admirer of director Damien Chazelle. His previous films have all been in my top 20 best movies of the year. Whiplash was extraordinary. La La Land I fell in love with, and First Man was a visual treat. Now we get Babylon, a breathtaking, roller-coaster ride through the early days of…
Tár
The thought of watching a 2-hour 37-minute drama about a female concert conductor with an odd title may not be the most inviting thing you will hear. However, forget about the subject matter, for this is an extraordinary piece of cinema from a director whose last film, Little Children, was made 16 years ago. It…
Corsage
There has been a lot of interest in Empress Elizabeth of Austria recently. At least five TV and film productions have been produced of late, including this, Corsage, which follows the year of the popular Empress as she approaches her 40th birthday. Yet for those unfamiliar with the lady, and while this looks magnificent and…
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel Pinocchio, has been a source of many a film adaptation. Disney’s 1940 version is probably the most famous, although their recent remake by Robert Zemeckis is a pointless exercise. Now, merely months after that version, Academy award-wining director Guillermo del Toro has delivered a stop-motion animated film that takes the premise…
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Rian Johnson is a man who has the perfect answer for his critics. After he was slated for making the second in the new Star Wars trilogy, The Last Jedi, Johnson made Knives Out, an old-fashioned whodunnit with a delicious cast and a lead character who could easily be called the new Hercules Poirot. The…
The Menu
A few weeks ago, we had the satire Triangle of Sadness, which depicted the rich and wealthy having a time on board a luxury yacht. Now we have The Menu, a perfect companion to the movie, as mentioned earlier, in which we have an exclusive restaurant for the super-rich, which turns out to be a…
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Black Panther was a cinematic phenomenon when it hit the screens in 2018. It broke box office records, became the first and only superhero film nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars and was a complete game changer for black cinema. A sequel was inevitable. However, no one would have predicted that the film’s star,…
Living
Good remakes are very hard to come by. Usually, a film doesn’t deserve to be modernised or updated. Some manage to be as good if not better than their counterpart, but these are very few and far between. Now we have Living, a remake of the classic 1952 film Ikiru, directed by acclaimed Japanese filmmaker…
Triangle of Sadness
Triangle of Sadness, the new film from acclaimed Swedish director, Ruben Östlund, is a scathing satire on the super rich and over-privileged. He is not a director who sits down politely and is kind to his main protagonists. His previous two outings, Force Majeure, a story of a man who abandons his family during an…
Stu Loves Film 