The Rover review

David Michôd‘s follow up to his breakout critical hit, the 2010 crime saga Animal Family, is filled with even more dread, violence and bleakness. The Rover is set in an Australia of the future and opens with a title card that tells us we’re “Ten Years After the Collapse.” It’s never entirely clear what that collapse consisted … Read more

Cannes: Doona Bae, Kim Sae-ron and Song Sae-byuk discuss A Girl at My Door

July Jung‘s A Girl at My Door explores many difficult themes, including child abuse, mental health, alcoholism and homophobia, always in a very sensitive manner. The characters in A Girl at My Door are complex and therefore the three principal actors, Doona Bae, Kim Sae-ron and Song Sae-byuk, have a lot of difficult work to … Read more

Cannes: Two Days, One Night review

The films of Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne are widely acclaimed by critics but maybe don’t cross over to public appreciation like some other, similar works. Their films are often extraordinarily moving, flawlessly made and soiciopolitically fascinating but they also tell small, intimate stories in a very quiet and restrained manner which tends not to … Read more

Cannes: National Gallery review

Frederick Wiseman’s astonishing new documentary, National Gallery, opens with two of the staff from the National Gallery in London discussing the role of the institution and the ways the public use it. On one side of the debate is Nicholas Penny, the director of the National Gallery, and on the other is a woman who … Read more