Reel Encounters

Sam Mendes’s “1917” arrives in local theatres this week as one of the last major films of 2019 to see a worldwide release.

When Andrew Lloyd Webber and Trevor Nunn adapted T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” (a series of poems) to the theatrical dance spectacle where a succession of feline characters sing about themselves, they weren’t thinking of filmic dramatic coherence.

Greta Gerwig’s new film, the literary adaptation “Little Women,” feels weighed down by its history.

Fourteen minutes into “Bombshell”, Gretchen Carlson meets with a pair of lawyers.

This review contains mild spoilers for the film. In the ironically titled “Marriage Story”, Nicole (an actress, played by Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (a director, played by Adam Driver) try to navigate the end of their marriage and custody of their eight-year-old son.

“Knives Out” and “Queen & Slim”, two American films that opened in the U.S.

It’s hard not to think of Martin Scorsese’s newly released “The Irishman” as a film that looks backward.

When the trailer for “Last Christmas” dropped a few months ago, speculation began about the built-in mystery that was clearly baked into the Christmas romantic-comedy.

“Ford v Ferrari” ends with the requisite historical facts to contextualise the “based on a true story” film we’ve just seen.

There’s no moment in “Terminator: Dark Fate” that works as excellently as a scene in the first act where Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor appears in a moment of crisis.

A little over an hour into “The Informer”, Pete Koslow (an excellent Joel Kinnaman) makes a call from jail.

There are so many entry-points to thinking of the recent action-thriller “Gemini Man”, that’s it’s hard to decide where exactly to start: With the fact that it has only recouped $120 million since it premiered worldwide two weeks ago despite a $130 million budget?

“Zombieland: Double Tap” knows as much as you do that it has emerged in a vastly different world than when its original debuted ten years ago.

A recurring criticism that’s been levelled against the new film “Joker” is the perceived emptiness of its ideals.

“Ad Astra” and “Abominable” are not easily recognisable as thematically complementary works but there’s something to be said about the dual journeys of the two protagonists – both of them buoyed by a relationship hinging on an absent father – that made me think of them in relation to each other.

“Downton Abbey” premiered as a self-contained miniseries in 2010. At the time, it comprised seven episodes exploring the lives of the Crawley family in Yorkshire England for two years between 1912 and 1914.

At the North American premiere of “The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão” at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz explained his aesthetic desire for the film.

In John Crowley’s new film, The Goldfinch of the title is a Carel Fabritius painting from 1654 that has changed hands and owners for centuries, always surviving tragedy.

Silence is used as a weapon in Chinonye Chukwu’s sobering death row drama “Clemency”.

Throughout its run-time, the Italian film “Martin Eden” centres on a paradox.