Top 20 films of 2024: 1 The Substance 2 Anora 3 Dune Part 2 4 Zone of Interest 5 Civil War 6 Anatomy of a Fall 7 The Apprentice 8 All of Us Strangers 9 Conclave 10 The Holdovers 11 Furiosa 12 Longlegs 13 Ferrari 14 A Different Man 15 […]
We Live in Time ★★★½ FANCY a good cry? Look no further than Irish director John Crowley’s We Live in Time. Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield play a couple whose relationship is tested by a life-threatening illness, but this is no ordinary weepie. Nick Payne’s script eschews the standard tropes […]
Pugh and Garfield lift weepie
A Real Pain ★★★½ JESSE Eisenberg’s second film is a nicely observed and quietly funny study of a family relationship. In A Real Pain, Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin play cousins David and Benji who embark on a trip to Poland to honour their grandmother who survived the World War II […]
A Real Pain is painstakingly real
Megalopolis ★★½ IT TOOK Francis Ford Coppola 40 years and $120 million of his own money to bring his magnum opus Megalopolis to the screen. But it only took free admission and a few hours for some critics to tear the film apart. Like the baying crowds filling Coppola’s alternate […]
Coppola’s Megalopolis flawed in execution
Better Man ★★★½ MUCH has been made of the decision to use a chimpanzee as the stand-in for a human Robbie Williams in Better Man. The biopic could have gone horribly wrong from the start, and maybe it will for some people. But trust me, it doesn’t take long to […]
The evolution of Robbie
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation ★★★ APPARENTLY, in real-life actor Chevy Chase is a bit of a wanker. But that doesn’t take away from the fact he created one of the funniest modern film characters in the hapless Clark Griswold. Clark’s long-suffering wife and kids are forced to put up with […]
Chasing the laughs
Kraven the Hunter ★★★ IS Kraven the Hunter the most violent Marvel film? I suspect so. You don’t see Iron Man or Thor tearing peoples’ throats out or slamming bear traps onto their heads. Aaron Taylor-Johnson does a decent job as Sergei Kravinoff, the son of a Russian crime lord […]
Kraven an adult Marvel
Carry-on ★★½ IF airport thriller Carry-On was a drink it would be diet Die Hard. Taron Egerton is a security officer and Jason Bateman is the bomber playing a cat-and-mouse game with him on Christmas Eve. We’ve seen it many times before, most notably in Die Hard 2, but the […]
Carry-on copying Die Hard
Mufasa: The Lion King ★★★ IF YOU’RE wondering why Barry Jenkins is directing Mufasa: The Lion King you’re not alone. The maker of contemplative dramas like Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk doesn’t seem the obvious choice for a studio, CGI-generated family film. Possibly Jenkins’ African American heritage prompted him […]
Voice cast lifts Mufasa origin story
Juror #2 ★★½ CLINT Eastwood is a titan of American film culture. Love or hate some of the man’s politics, you can’t deny his impact as both actor and director over six decades. The quality of his output has waned in recent years – the guy is 94 after all […]
The verdict on Eastwood’s latest
Anora ★★★★ SEAN Baker has made some very good films – Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket – but has remained largely unknown outside the art-house cinema world. Until now. His latest, Anora, is a kinetic blast of film making from start to finish that has achieved mainstream attention and […]
Baker breaks through with Anora
Mayhem ★★★ IN THE film streaming era the action genre share is significant. Go to any service and there is no shortage of releases from every corner of the globe, as opposed to the previous US domination of the video store shelves. A recent French offering worth seeking out is […]