Loud And Clear Reviews • 25th May 2026

The Black Ball (La Bola Negra) Film Review

The Black Ball is brilliantly made and heartfelt in its ambition, even if it can’t convey its characters’ passion as well as their suffering.


The Black Ball (La Bola Negra) is a pleasantly trickier proposition, at once more conventional and more subversive than its fellow Palme d’Or competitors. Its historical setting and reconciliation to tragedies past screams for trophies, but its era-spanning multiple narratives are burdened with breathtaking ambition. Writer-directors Javier Ambrossi and...

Loud And Clear Reviews • 20th May 2026

Hope (2026) Film Review: A Wild Ride

Forgive Hope its obvious flaws, and a ridiculously fun time will be had with Na Hong-jin’s creative creature feature.


Hope is intense, but it couldn’t be much less cerebral if it tried. Rarely is something so silly made with so much investment by cast and crew. Its flaws are readily apparent, but that makes it easier to overcome them, and just enjoy this perky but prolonged ride. Goodness knows why it’s in Competition, but a press corps left jaded by an otherwise lacklustre lineup to this poi...

Loud And Clear Reviews • 20th May 2026

Minotaur Review: Russia Caught In A Labyrinth

Writer-director Andrey Zvyagintsev returns angrier than ever with Minotaur, his latest excoriation of the authoritarian Russian state.


Scorsese doesn’t always make mobster pictures, and Spielberg isn’t always pining over absent fathers. Andrey Zvyagintsev, on the other hand, can be reliably depended upon to skewer the contemporary Russian political firmament with righteous anger. Minotaur, Zvyagintsev’s first feature since 2017’s Loveless, delivers almost exactly what you’d expect from the ex...

Loud And Clear Reviews • 16th May 2026

All of a Sudden (Soudain): Film Review

All Of A Sudden (Soudain) showcases Ryūsuke Hamaguchi in full-throated expression of his intelligence, optimism, and naïveté.


Hamaguchi sidesteps such accusations by keeping these chats real, and infusing them with warmth, ensuring that the time is well spent. All Of A Sudden (Soudain), his first film made outside Japan, tests the limits of his approach. It’s full of generous and intelligent characters that draw you towards them with their grace, but Hamaguchi is so enamoured with them that h...

Loud And Clear Reviews • 15th May 2026

Fatherland Review: Home Is Where The Heartbreak Is

Sandra Hüller shines in Fatherland, Paweł Pawlikowski’s latest gorgeous journey to find the people and places we call home.


Pawlikowski returns to features after Cold War won him Best Director at Cannes eight years ago, and Fatherland is all about going back to fertile ground, the loving bosom of lands that welcomed you once upon a time. The film opens with Mann’s son Klaus (August Diehl, of The Ice Tower) talking on the phone to his sister Erika (Sandra Hüller, of Anatomy of a Fall), making...

HeadStuff • 23rd April 2026

Mother Mary movie review | Hathaway does Madonna in hollow superstar meltdown - HeadStuff

It used to be that, in times of trouble, Mother Mary came to us speaking words of wisdom. Now, she arrives looking like Anne Hathaway caught in a downpour and approaching a nervous breakdown. Mother Mary is not lacking for compelling imagery but, for all its subverted religious imagery, writer-director David Lowery’s latest tale of a desperate search for identity is closer to “Jesus Christ” than “Yaaasss, kweeen”. 


Stabs at psychosexuality? Flirtations with violence? Award-tickling prestige?...

Loud And Clear Reviews • 20th April 2026

Surviving Earth Review: Pain Is A Drug

With honesty, slick production and a terrific lead, Surviving Earth is a heartfelt and attention-grabbing feature debut for Thea Gajic.


This time is precious, a moment when life seemed good for Vlad, and people in general, free of international strife and a pervading sense of depression. As we learn, Vlad’s had his share of that. A veteran of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, Vlad came to Britain to improve his lot. Feature debut director Thea Gajic paints the world her lead inhabits in bright...

HeadStuff • 17th April 2026

The Wizard of the Kremlin movie review | The Rule Of Law Undermined In Shaky Political Drama - HeadStuff

It’s apt that The Wizard of the Kremlin centres on a theatre director and playwright, as its overwritten and overwrought nature means it would probably play best on stage. Rather than a stage play, director Olivier Assayas delivers a political drama of the kind he’s made before to mixed effect. The Wizard of the Kremlin is itself a mixed bag, though it’ll be interesting to revisit in years to come, to see how much of its power lies in its topicality. Explanations for Vladimir Putin’s continued m...

HeadStuff • 9th April 2026

The Stranger movie review | Camus Can Do, But Ozon Ain’t The Fella To Film This Novella - HeadStuff

The indifference and absurdity at the heart of Albert Camus’ novella L’Étranger don’t scream out for a cinematic treatment, but François Ozon revels in manifesting lofty ideas in a grounded and (sometimes overly) tasteful manner. That’s exactly what we get in The Stranger, a handsome and well-meaning adaptation of Camus’ masterwork that was doomed to struggle to portray the novel’s themes with the same profundity and candor.


“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.” The first lin...

HeadStuff • 23rd March 2026

Dead Man’s Wire movie review | Dog Day Afterthought - HeadStuff

In his acceptance speech for the Academy Award for Best Picture, Paul Thomas Anderson cited the phenomenal quintet of films that made up the nominees for that same award in 1975. He mooted that their shared quality shows that the films this year needn’t compete amongst one another for attention and acclaim (though anyone who saw Frankenstein or F1 knows that simply isn’t true). The rebellious spirit of the likes of Dog Day Afternoon informed Anderson’s vision in One Battle After Another, but Dea...

Philip Bagnall • 20th March 2026

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

What are we supposed to do with this, anyway? Did anyone ask for a Peaky Blinders sequel? Fans of the show (This writer included) certainly didn’t, and its arrival on Netflix (following a brief stint in a handful of cinemas, as per Ted Sarandos’ ‘commitment’ to theatrical distribution) invites little beyond a shrug. Contempt would take up too much energy.Peaky Blinders concluded its broadcast run in 2021, with creator Steven Knight wrapping up a multi-year character-driven narrative that saw the...

FILMHOUNDS Magazine • 6th March 2026

The Love That Remains (Film Review) – Love On Ice

The Icelandics were always bound to have a unique and quirky sense of humour. Alien to North Americans, but just too far adrift from the rest of Scandinavia, Iceland lies far enough removed from everywhere to evolve an artistic and comedic sensibility all its own. What a pleasant surprise, then, to find that its process of evolution was entirely convergent. The Love That Remains might play as too wry for some, but the ideas it touches on and the wicked humour on display have universal appeal. A...

FILMHOUNDS Magazine • 22nd February 2026

Menus-Plaisirs, les Troisgros (Film Review) – In-Depth And Delicious

Dining at a Michelin-starred restaurant is often reserved as an experience, something to be savoured because the judges from the tyre company deemed it worthy. Since the three-star hierarchy was established by the Guide Michelin in 1931, few establishments have managed to garner the illustrious full three stars. Menus-Plaisirs, les Troisgros is an attempt to show the ambition and effort that goes into earning and maintaining such a reputation, as the Troisgros family continue to run three restau...

HeadStuff • 19th February 2026

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Movie Review | Rose Byrne Is One Tough Mother! - HeadStuff

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You opens on a close-up of Linda’s (Rose Byrne) face, and the camera is reluctant to leave her for most of the film that follows. Mothers are often put in an uncomfortable gaze by people who aren’t in their shoes, and Mary Bronstein’s brilliantly paranoid fable manifests that discomfort in terrifyingly vivid detail. Walk a mile in someone’s shoes to know them, they say. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You runs a marathon in Linda’s unsupportive flats while having a panic attack....

HeadStuff • 12th February 2026

Little Amélie or The Character of Rain | Dazzling Animation Treats Kids With Intelligence And Respect - HeadStuff

Animation is so often demoted to the realm of ‘children’s entertainment’, but Little Amélie or the Character of Rain is different. It knows it’s aimed at kids, and tells its story from a child’s point of view, but that doesn’t stop it from engaging with loftier ideas, centred on spiritual and human connection. In its opening sequence, a child narrates the story of her birth, and posits the idea that she is nothing less than God. Any parent of a newborn will tell you that their child becomes the...

Loud And Clear Reviews • 13th January 2026

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Review

Director Nia DaCosta follows Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later with The Bone Temple, a leaner, smarter, nastier sequel, the best of the franchise since the original.


Both were potent on those terms, but 28 Years Later saw returning director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland try to do too much. It proved more effective at its musings on the inevitability of time and death than when grappling with the aftermaths of Covid-19 and Brexit.


Watching 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, it’s clear that d...

HeadStuff • 8th January 2026

Hamnet Movie Review | Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal’s Sublimely Sad Shakespeare Story - HeadStuff

Hamnet opens on Agnes (Jessie Buckley) lying amongst the raised roots of a mighty tree in a forest glade. Enveloped in the greenery and birdsong, the image evokes memories of Millais’ painting of Ophelia drowning after Hamlet has driven her insane. The evocation is apt, as Agnes is more commonly known as Anne Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare. In this image, director Chloé Zhao lays down her intent. This story is something more elemental and deeply felt than the usual biopic. Hamnet isn’...

Loud And Clear Reviews • 29th December 2025

Craig Brewer on Song Sung Blue: Interview

Watch and read our interview with director Craig Brewer, who tells us about Song Sung Blue, Lightning & Thunder and Neil Diamond ahead of the film’s theatrical release.


Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman), a middle-aged Vietnam vet and recovering alcoholic, makes ends meet with a job as a mechanic, but he has bigger dreams. He moonlights as “Lighting”, a cover artist on the local circuit in Milwaukee, but with little success. When he meets Patsy Cline impersonator Claire Stengl (Kate Hudson) at a gig...

HeadStuff • 23rd December 2025

Marty Supreme movie review | Timothée Chalamet's ping-pong epic is a total smash! - HeadStuff

The fallacy at the heart of the American Dream is that working hard and nurturing one’s own talent will guarantee success. Marty Supreme sees poor Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) learn that this isn’t necessarily so. From the opening scenes, it’s readily apparent that Mauser isn’t mousy, his silver tongue helping him sell shoes to punters like ice to an Inuit. He may be able to flog clogs, but his larger dream of sporting glory is gonna take more than a quick turn of phrase to achieve.


After...

FILMHOUNDS Magazine • 4th December 2025

L'Atalante (4K Review)

The legacy of director Jean Vigo (1905 -1934) stretches far beyond his meagre oeuvre. His tragic death from tuberculosis at the age of 29 has always added a layer of sadness to his films, as well as regret that he never got to make more. However, any number of revisits to his only feature film L'Atalante show that the sadness and regret are justified. Like Charles Laughton with The Night of the Hunter, it should have been one of the great debuts at the start of a long career, but it still stands...

Loud And Clear Reviews • 24th November 2025

Interview: Shih-Ching Tsou on Left-Handed Girl

We interview Left-Handed Girl writer-director Shih-Ching Tsou about her creative process, her approaches to casting and shooting in her native Taiwan.


In Left-Handed Girl, Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) takes her children, teenager I-Ann (Shih-yuan Ma) and little moppet I-Jing (Nina Yeh), to her hometown of Taipei to set up a noodle stall, but their new home and circumstances bring challenges and bitter truths. As I-Jing contemplates her place in her family and new city, her grandfather’s admonition of...

HeadStuff • 13th November 2025

The Running Man movie review | Edgar Wright's flashy remake runs out of puff long before the finish line - HeadStuff

Glen Powell is making all the right moves to become an old-school, bona fide movie star. Even if we’re not making them anymore, he’ll almost certainly be one. An appearance by Tom Cruise, the real running man, at Powell’s latest world premiere feels like an endorsement in that direction. This is in spite of Powell’s choices of scripts, which often involve him obscuring his looks for the plot. Powell is front and centre in The Running Man, which forces his charisma into the faces of his audience....

Loud And Clear Reviews • 23rd October 2025

Kenny Dalglish Review: Long Live The King

Asif Kapadia’s Kenny Dalglish is a heartfelt tribute to the Scotland and Liverpool legend, albeit lacking the bite of his best work.


This lad from Glasgow who made good on the promise he showed from his youth seems an unlikely subject for a documentary from Asif Kapadia. The Academy Award-winning director has cornered the market on cautionary tales, but he locates enough tragedy amongst the talent in Kenny Dalglish to play to his strengths, and a compelling (if unremarkable) portrait emerges....

Loud And Clear Reviews • 17th October 2025

The Death of Bunny Munro Review

Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro comes to our screens with two compelling lead performances and a smart balance between smut and sentiment.


As made clear in the first two episodes of the new mini-series that were screened at the BFI London Film Festival, this story of a man addicted to sex, alcohol and general hedonism is tailor-made for an actor who wants to shed a nice boy image, but who also wants to retain the charm and mutate it into something more primal and dangerous.


Smith is f...