Philip Bagnall

Reviews

HeadStuff •

Conclave | Ralph Fiennes Elevates Pulpy Papal Potboiler - HeadStuff

If history (Both recent and otherwise) has taught us anything, it’s that politics is a show. The demands of ceremony and functional government require us to facilitate the ego-stroking of the most ambitious and conniving members of society. Elections are (usually) big enough to dilute the megalomania somewhat, but the conclave of… er, Conclave comes down to a few dozen cardinals in the Sistine Chapel picking their next leader. Gossip and self-righteousness are the order of the day as the Catholi...
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The American Review: A Dance of Blood, Sweat and Tears

The American (Joika) is nothing new as a biopic, but Talia Ryder sells the sacrifices one has to make for their art.


Ballet dancers must be frustrated with the depictions of their art in popular culture. The dance is genteel and precious on the surface, but the practice of ballet is punishing, requiring years of training and a great deal of sacrifice. The American captures the pain required to make it in the world of ballet better than any other film on the subject. Every drop of blood and sw...
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Gladiator II | Paul Mescal's Blockbuster Debut is All Talk and No Toga - HeadStuff

You know what’s still a terrific film? Gladiator.


Against all the odds (including on-set rewrites, injuries aplenty, and the death of a major actor mid-shoot), Ridley Scott’s 2000 behemoth achieved box office and awards success, and briefly revived the swords-and-sandals epic as a viable genre. That trend died out a few years later (Scott’s own Kingdom of Heaven was a notable casualty, though the Director’s Cut is well worth seeking out), but the fondness for such old-school epics amongst dir...
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Small Things Like These Review: Small Town, Big Secrets

Small Things Like These is modest in runtime and ambition, but it allows Cillian Murphy’s sublime performance to convey its message and anger.


He lifted his head up when everyone else was keeping theirs down, and what he saw changed his life forever. It’s an epic hook on a local scale. It’s a more painful story than The Quiet Girl, which was also adapted from a Keegan novel, but one that seeks to stir its audience in similar ways with its humility and grace.


The story of Ireland’s Magdalen...
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Ellis Park Review: A Man On A Mission

Ellis Park is a charming profile of Bad Seeds maestro Warren Ellis, even if fans know most of what it has to say already. 


Parallels will inevitably be drawn between this film and the numerous documentaries that have been made about Ellis’ friend and collaborator Nick Cave. The likes of 20,000 Days on Earth and This Much I Know To Be True are esoteric in their approach to profiling Cave, and Ellis Park can’t help but look conventional by comparison. However, this does make it a good introduct...
Next Best Picture •

"THAT CHRISTMAS" - Review

THE STORY – A blizzard hits a seaside town, setting off entwined tales of family, friends, love and loneliness – and Santa making a big mistake.
THE CAST – Brian Cox, Fiona Shaw, Jodie Whittaker & Bill Nighy
THE TEAM – Simon Otto (Director), Richard Curtis & Peter Souter (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 92 Minutes
Richard Curtis has created his fair share of mawkish onscreen Christmas moments, but surprisingly, the creator of “Love, Actually” and “About Time” has never made a film expressly for chil...
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Hard Truths Review: A Late Leigh Stunner

Mike Leigh delivers a raw and timely domestic drama in Hard Truths. A fiery Marianne Jean-Baptiste leads a superb cast.


She might be named for a delicate flower, but Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is anything but. From the moment she wakes up (usually from a nightmare), she’s on edge all day. Finding fault in everyone and everything she encounters, she lashes out at anyone who does even the slightest thing to irritate her Shop staff, medical professionals, even the birds on her driveway; no-o...
Next Best Picture •

"THE SUMMER BOOK" - Review

THE STORY – Follows the inspirational tale of a young girl and her grandmother spending a summer on a small, uninhabited island in the Gulf of Finland.
THE CAST – Emily Matthews, Glenn Close, Anders Danielsen Lie, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Pekka Strang & Sophia Heikkilä
THE TEAM – Charlie McDowell (Director) & Robert Jones (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 90 Minutes
It so often happens that the most unassuming works that elicit the strongest emotions. Finnish author Tove Jansson (1914-2001) was adept at cre...
Next Best Picture •

"JOY" - Review

THE STORY – Set in the 1960s and 1970s, a nurse (McKenzie), a visionary scientist (Norton), and an innovative surgeon (Nighy) work to develop the first “test-tube baby.”
THE CAST – Bill Nighy, Thomasin McKenzie, James Norton & Joanna Scanlan
THE TEAM – Ben Taylor (Director) & Jack Thorne (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 115 minutes
Childbirth has been at the forefront of several significant releases this year. More specifically, the fears around pregnancy have crept from subtext into text in some fil...
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One to One: John & Yoko Review - Plays The Hits

One to One: John & Yoko is an affectionate look at the couple’s activism, but there’s nothing new here for Lennon devotees.


Like Daytime Revolution, One to One: John & Yoko is primarily focused on a single event. On 30th August 1972, Lennon performed his only publicly announced concerts after the breakup of the Beatles, namely a benefit gig for the Willowbrook State Hospital for disabled children in Staten Island. The footage from the concert is as enthralling and well-produced as you’d expec...
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The End Review: The Beginning of Something Wonderful

Joshua Oppenheimer’s masterful post-apocalyptic musical The End soars on gorgeous filmmaking, confidence and raw emotion.


To complete an unlikely trilogy, we get The End. This could have had the campest approach to a post-apocalyptic story this side of Roland Emmerich, but it comes from a director who has turned unlikely displays of artistic expression into masterpieces before, and thankfully, he’s done it again.


Joshua Oppenheimer’s career as a filmmaker rests almost entirely on the backs...
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Watership Down Review: Still Burrowing Into Your Nightmares

With commitment to the realities of the natural world, the passage of time has done little to water down Watership Down’s fierce power.


From E.B. White to Roald Dahl, the best children’s classics know to instill some measure of fear in their readers/viewers. Adams imparted his own concerns for animal welfare to his daughters via stories of uprooted and hunted rabbits in the hills near their Hampshire home, which eventually became his 1972 multi-million bestselling novel. The tale of the intre...
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Endurance Review: Shackleton’s story brought to life

Endurance is a tale of incredible courage from long ago brought to life, albeit with a dual narrative that gets in the way of the main story.


The story of the Endurance fits nicely into the oeuvre of husband and wife filmmakers Chin and Vasarhelyi. After last year’s Nyad, which took a tale of achievement in the face of insurmountable odds and compressed it into a cookiecutter biopic template, they return to the documentary form that won them an Academy Award for Free Solo. That film boasted p...
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Festival Review: One of the Year's Best Films | Anora is a breathless whirlwind of sex, oligarchs and dreams turned sour - HeadStuff

Sean Baker has become a most unlikely chronicler of the American Dream for Gen Z. That he gets to do so while never straying from his commitment to telling the stories of sex workers and societal outcasts is miraculous. At the core of all these stories, from Prince of Broadway to Tangerine to Red Rocket, is a desperation to move beyond one’s station in life, and all their protagonists can do is try to hustle their way out. It’s a universal sentiment, one shared by Anora (Mikey Madison), the hero...
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Grand Tour Review: A Journey Well Worth Taking

Miguel Gomes’ Cannes-prizewinning Grand Tour is a dazzling marriage of past and present, and fact and fiction.


From some very disparate elements he sculpts a unique travelogue, one that exists behind a veil of sadness, and yet still captures the wonder of many wonderful destinations. This, Gomes’ first solo credit as director since 2015’s dreadfully indulgent Arabian Nights trilogy, returns to the dreamy stylishness of Tabu to create an dazzling (but not over-idealised) portrait of a time lon...
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Marco, the Invented Truth Review: Liar Exposed

Marco, The Invented Truth has a juicy story and a terrific lead performance, but lacks the depth required to interrogate the true story behind it.


When someone finally does question Marco’s background, directors Jon Garaño and Aitor Arregi milk plenty of tension out of watching a man sweat in Marco, The Invented Truth, even if they never fully explore his reasons for putting himself in this precarious position.


Films based on impostors are always compelling in evoking the tension between t...
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Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other Review: Love and Death, but Love First

Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other is a cosy but honest portrait of a happy, if imbalanced, relationship.


Like in last year’s The Eternal Memory, this pair is fighting the inevitable onset of age as best they know how, stress-testing their love in the process. You can guess whether or not it will survive, but it’s a harsh fact that the same bodies we use to express our love can sabotage it just as easily.


The focus on the current, later stage of our central couple’s lives is what...
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Soundtrack to a Coup d'État Review: Jazz at the End of Empire

Soundtrack To A Coup d’État is a mesmerizing (if overlong) look at how music can both inspire and placate the masses.


The death of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Republic of the Congo, continues to be a black stain on the region’s history. Though only officially the prime minister of the newly independent nation for a number of months before being abducted and shot in 1961, Lumumba’s assassination remains emblematic of the post-colonial struggle in Africa. It’s a grim story,...
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Sofa, So Good Film Review: A Couch Potato 

The Thiele brothers’ debut film Sofa, So Good looks good, but lacks the laughs or insight needed to make an impact.


Alas, only one film gets to be the trailblazer, and Sofa, So Good simply isn’t strong enough to step out of Smith’s shadow.


The premise of Sofa, So Good is pleasingly simple. Jake (Joseph Jeffries) and his cousin Red (Yahel Pack) need a new couch. When they find a second-hand sofa for sale, the film follows the pair on their intrepid adventures through Dayton, Ohio to carry t...
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La Máquina Episode 1 Review: Dos Amigos Strike TV Gold

Episode 1 of La Máquina overcomes clichés of the washed-up boxer with energetic pacing, plenty of laughs and charming leads.



Showrunner & Writer: Marco RamirezDirector: Gabriel RipsteinGenre: Sport DramaNumber of episodes: 6Starring: Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Eiza GonzálezRelease Date: October 9, 2024, all episodes at onceWhere to watch: Hulu (US) and Disney Plus (UK & Ireland)



Haven’t we been here before? A washed-up boxer looks for a way back into the ring, and into the hearts...
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Festival Review: The Apprentice is Everything a Donald Trump Movie Should Be — Strangely Compelling to Watch, but Empty - HeadStuff

It’s official: playing second fiddle to Chris Evans is no longer the toughest gig Sebastian Stan has played. The one-time Winter Soldier goes from one untrustworthy patriot in Captain America to another in The Apprentice. Taking on the role of Donald J. Trump is an entirely thankless task. Unless you’re gurning for comedic kudos à la Alec Baldwin on SNL, there is precious little point in trying to bring depth to this most vacuous subject. Think what you might about Trump, but you have to believe...
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Why War Review: The eternal question still needs answering

Amos Gitai’s Why War, his latest interrogation of war in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, is too dry and low-key to inspire.


The title Why War derives from the correspondence entered into by Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud in 1932. Despite their standing in their respective fields, they could not reach any great new conclusions on the nature of conflict. The letters, published under the title ‘Why War?’, remain brief but fascinating reads. As a portrait of men united by their f...
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Jackpot! Film Review: Not A Winner

Jackpot! masquerades as satire, but weak direction and a limp script only serve to undermine the charms of its leads.


Whenever a winning ticket is chosen, the owner of the ticket automatically becomes a live target for all the other players. If one of them kills the chosen winner, they get to claim a share of their multi-billion jackpot. This premise has the kernel of an idea, but screenwriter Rob Yescombe figures that the idea of lottery players being so desperate as to become murderous is c...
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Slapstick Epic Hundreds of Beavers is a Giddily Enjoyable Romp - HeadStuff

Hundreds of Beavers, a Von Stroheim Looney Tune of wild imagination, caters to an audience that’s harping for a nostalgia that isn’t based on one particular movie or Saturday morning cartoon. The feature debut of FX man-turned-writer/director Mike Cheslik is a giddily enjoyable romp, at once winking at the audience in its anachronisms, and embracing those same anachronisms to bring a silly story to vivid life. Like many a childish entertainment, it could annoy anyone who deems themselves above i...
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