Category: Film ReviewsPage 26 of 32

Unbroken

Review by © Jane Freebury One of the ironies of this WWII film whose director’s name precedes it, is that the young American airman at the centre of…

Mr Turner

Review by Jane Freebury Of all the times in an artist’s life to choose from, director Mike Leigh has chosen to portray the great English landscape painter J.M.W….

Exodus: Gods and Kings

Review by Jane Freebury For the second time this year, a blockbuster about the miraculous deeds of a man ‘chosen by god’ has arrived on screen, courtesy of…

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1

Review by Jane Freebury The story of a teenage girl fighting to save the world as we no longer know it, instead of worrying which of the handsome…

The Drop

Review by Jane Freebury A smoothly crafted tale of minor redemption that gives James Gandolfini his final bow, has a British and a Swedish actor in the lead…

Pride

Review by Jane Freebury This big-hearted sprawling movie shuttles between a grungy gay and lesbian bookshop in inner London and a mining village nestled in the rolling green…

The Hundred-Foot Journey

Review by Jane Freebury In bringing the popular novel by Richard C Morais to the screen, Swedish director Lasse Hallström and the enthusiastic producers of The Hundred-Foot Journey…

Begin Again

Review by Jane Freebury The hauteur that goes with Keira Knightley’s cheekbones in some signature roles has vanished in this fresh and engaging human drama set in the…

A Most Wanted Man

Review by Jane Freebury It’s a tough ask, separating our response to the Philip Seymour Hoffman character in A Most Wanted Man from the knowledge that this classy…

Venus in Fur

Review by Jane Freebury To begin with, there’s a taste of Paris as we track down a boulevard, between rows of wintry trees. We turn off at a…

Jersey Boys

Review by Jane Freebury Movie evergreen Clint Eastwood has recently been showing us other sides to himself besides the swaggering cowboy in buckskins that made him famous. The…

Frank

Review by Jane Freebury It’s such a short, no-nonsense name for a complete eccentric and it belies the weirdness and whimsy of his story, but what other shorthand…

The Rover

Review by Jane Freebury As a vision of a lawless future, David Michôd’s eagerly anticipated new film is about as good as it gets. Set 10 years after…

Ida

Review by Jane Freebury This solemn, spare and beautiful personal journey begins in a house of silence, a convent, where a young woman is preparing herself for the…

Belle

Review by Jane Freebury A portrait of the woman who inspired this film, the daughter of an English sea captain and a black woman held in slavery, was…

Hannah Arendt

Review by Jane Freebury This could have gone wide as a more conventional life story of influential 20th century philosopher, Hannah Arendt, the first to write on the…

Tracks

Review by Jane Freebury Exactly what possessed a young woman to decide she was going to trek with camels across Australia may be something we’ll never quite understand….

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Review by Jane Freebury ‘Who wouldn’t want to be a lobby boy at the Grand Budapest? It’s an institution.’ The answer that nails it for the new lobby…

Noah

Review by Jane Freebury A big screen treatment of the life of a key prophet of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is one helluva big undertaking, destined for controversy….

Le Week-End

Review by Jane Freebury It’s some time into this remarkable film about a lived-in relationship that we actually find out what the couple who’ve been married for ever…