Search Results

Watch Where The Merrows Roam at the 2022 UK Film Review Festival. See the UKFRF 2022 lineup and buy your festival pass. Where The Merrows Roam Listen to our review on the film podcast What our film review said: READ FULL REVIEW Proving the old adage that pictures speak a thousand words, Where the Merrows Roam is a slow-burn that provides audiences the opportunity to lose themselves in a mercurial daydream. The experience will not connect with every viewer, and the story becomes overly intricate at times. But the inventiveness of the storytelling means that those it does reach will remember their experience. Proudly supporting MediCinema for our 2022 film festival.

Thank you page for UK Film Review. Requests for film reviews or movie promotion will be answered as soon as possible. Thanks! Congratulations, your message has been sent to our friendly UK Film Review team! We will try and respond to your request or enquiry as quickly as possible. In the meantime, why not hang out and watch some Movie Trailers or read some Film Reviews? You can also listen to our film podcast on iTunes below (or search anywhere you listen to Podcasts).

Watch Pulse at the 2022 UK Film Review Festival. See the UKFRF 2022 lineup and buy your festival pass. Pulse Listen to our review on the film podcast What our film review said: READ FULL REVIEW When Rajat is talking to his brother by phone, the image is shown through the camera of their smartphones, which is a creative filming technique. Abhijit Roy develops beautiful cinematography and the music by Harsh Dave is dramatic and tense. Proudly supporting MediCinema for our 2022 film festival.

A forum and online community for filmmakers and film critics alike to enjoy. Promote your film or reviewing capabilities here. To test this feature, visit your live site. Categories All Posts My Posts Login / Sign up UK Film Review Forum Explore your forum below to see what you can do, or head to Settings to start managing your Categories. Create New Post Film Reviews Post a film review here and if we like your review we may ask to publish it on our site. subcategory-list-item.views subcategory-list-item.posts 527 Follow Vlog Film Reviews Upload your film review to YouTube or Vimeo and share the video here. subcategory-list-item.views subcategory-list-item.posts 14 Follow Movie Trailers Where can people find the best Movie Trailers? Promote your film trailer here, or talk about epic ones you have seen. subcategory-list-item.views subcategory-list-item.posts 58 Follow Film Festivals A forum dedicated to the best Film Festivals in the UK and internationally. subcategory-list-item.views subcategory-list-item.posts 46 Follow New Posts Ben Twomey Nov 21, 2024 "Gladiator II" (2024) review by Ben Twomey Film Reviews Gladiator II (2024) Savage. Silly. Spectacular. More than two decades after the original won ‘Best Picture’ at the Oscars, Gladiator II injects the world with some good old-fashioned anabolic steroids. As with any illicit steroid use, this is not to be encouraged and produces some very mixed results. Director Ridley Scott’s storyline picks up about 20 years after the original Gladiator’s fateful clash between tough but traumatised Maximus and self-pitying Commodus. We follow Lucius Varus, the young boy who accidentally gave the game away about Maximus’ imminent coup in Gladiator. After watching his hero suffer the consequences, it turns out he went full witness protection programme. New city, new name, new…muscles? That’s right, the skinny kid got jacked. When Lucius’ (Paul Mescal) home is conquered by the ever-expanding reach of the Roman Empire under General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), he is enslaved and forced to fight. Lucius’ owner and sponsor, Macrinus (Denzel Washington), sets him on a recognisable journey from small-time desert arena to the bright lights of Rome’s Colosseum. Twin Emperors and total psychopaths (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) are ruling the roost, while Lucius’ mother Lucilla (Connie Nielson reprising her role) is still stuck doing what she can to survive. She’s also dating Pedro Pascal’s character, which in any other circumstance would mean she’s thriving. The future of the empire is at stake but a furious and vengeful Lucius must reckon with his past if he is to seize his destiny. It’s so difficult to overstate how much this film amps everything up, that to understate it would feel out of kilter with the movie. An exercise in subtlety can be found by comparing to Emperor Commodus’ clammy and unwell aesthetic in Gladiator. That wouldn’t be enough for the twin emperors in Gladiator II, who have instead powdered their faces white and used red eye liner for their own imperial brand of conjunctivitis chic. The comparisons keep flowing, invited by the film constantly and lazily dishing up throwbacks to the original. In Gladiator, Russell Crowe’s Maximus is mostly quite muted. He is softly spoken and rarely expressive, but it works. Skip ahead to this sequel, and it’s difficult to pin down any personality at all for Mescal’s Lucius. Meanwhile Nielson’s Lucilla, who could have brought continuity to the franchise, feels lacklustre and a little bit lost. While the turbocharged plot left little time for nuanced character development, it’s not all bad. Denzel Washington steals the show as the wily Macrinus. Washington’s unparalleled charisma and on-screen presence keeps the audience invested in what could otherwise be quite dull scenes, and not for the first time (see: Training Day, Inside Man, Equaliser or basically anything he’s in). But the chemistry between the other characters was at times so stilted that even Pascal seems to struggle. If you’re looking for the fiery excitement of his Game of Thrones performance as Oberyn Martell, then look elsewhere. To give the actors a break though, these problems might have something to do with the writing. From Tacitus to Virgil, the dialogue is like a greatest hits of bumper sticker Roman philosophy. Dialogue made up entirely of ancient clichés and stoic maxims would be a challenge for any performer to land, and the emotional depth of the film suffers for it. But if lack of character development leaves a sour taste in your mouth, fear not, you can always wash it down with bucket-loads of blood. Gladiator II as an action spectacle does not disappoint, with adrenaline-fuelled violence hacking and slashing its way into every other scene. The use of beasts in grand set pieces is certainly entertaining, if implausible. If this film goes on to win any accolades at all, the stunt actors deserve the lion’s share. The music is also compelling in those moments where it does not lean too heavily on the original soundtrack. Composer Hans Zimmer gives way to Harry Gregson-Williams, whose use of choral music is particularly divine in adding much-needed tension. The problem is there are just too many throwbacks for this to be considered a standalone film, which presents a double-edged sword. You have to watch the original Gladiator to fully appreciate it, but in watching the original Gladiator you exclude yourself from appreciating it much at all. In ancient history, an arrogant emperor looked back on his reign and boasted that “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble”. Sadly, between Gladiator and Gladiator II, an arrogant producer has taken a masterpiece of marble and transformed it into common brick. One day Hollywood will have matured enough to sensitively reimagine sequels or remakes. One day filmmakers will ask themselves if they’re using CGI because they should, or just because they could. One day the colosseum will rise again to a gripping storyline. That day may come. But not yet, not yet. Like 0 comments 0 Gregory Mann Jan 24, 2024 "Past Lives" Written by Gregory Mann Film Reviews "Past Lives" (Prince Charles Cinema) Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora's.family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they're reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance. The film, at once strikingly intimate and bracing in its scope, is broken into three parts spanning countries and decades: first with Nora (Moon Seung-ah) as a young girl in Korea, developing an early bond with her best friend, Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min), before she immigrates with her family to Toronto; then, following Nora in her early 20s as she reconnects virtually with Hae Sung; and finally, more than a decade later, when Hae Sung visits Nora, now a playwright married to an author, Arthur (John Magaro), in New York. The film has the instincts and control of an artist with a precise vision of the story's every conflicted, emotional note. The triptych that tracks Nora over the years is, in the most basic sense, about the different parts of her past. But in the film's breadth, sketching out the long arc of her relationships with Hae Sung and Arthur, and the memorable moment when they all eventually come together, the film constructs a deeply resonant and warmly generous meditation on the trajectory of a life. It's about, on a very simple level, what it's like to exist as a person. Or what it's like to choose a life that you live. More specifically, what that choice means for Nora, and what happens when the other choice, her phantom life in a sense, is suddenly staring at her through a computer screen, or across a park in New York City. It's so unfair, the devastating thing about us as people, the fact that we only have one life. The simple, poignant tragedy in the film is also its animating idea: that choosing one life means losing another. There's a piece of yourself that you leave behind in the place you left, who like Nora, emigrated from Korea at the age of 12 for Toronto, before moving again to New York in her 20s. The moment, and the meaning and history filled in that gaze, bears a striking resemblance to the moment in "Past Lives", when Nora and Hae Sung finally see each other, in person, for the first time in years. It's like seeing a reflection of yourself from a different time. Hae Sung a hologram of a totally different existence, what could have been. The connection that Nora develops, first as a child, then over online messages and Skype sessions in her 20er, and revisits in-person later in life is, structurally, a carbon copy of what happened in Hae Sung's life. For her, the experience, one that is at some level universal for anyone who has simply moved into, say, another city or another phase of life, is especially disorienting and wistful, imbued by a distinctly diasporic longing as an immigrant who left behind her country, culture, and language at a formative age. You're not just seeing this person as they're, but you're seeing them as you remember them, which is in childhood. Nora, in other words, is her own person, rather than an idea sketched out by the binary of which man she chooses. She's so certain about what she wants. And yet, as Nora's worlds collide between these two men, the third act eventually returns us to the bar scene that opens the film, with renewed context, if also a new, uneasy tension. There aren't any villains. But there are people who are filled with pride and people who are jealous and envious and angry, but they've to fight through those emotions. It would be a mistake, though, to read this dynamic as an early scene of a melodramatic love triangle. If "Past Lives" is a film about adults trying their best to behave like adults, no dramatic professions of love, no teary-eyed fights, no villains, this isn't to say it isn't a film that deals in sweeping emotional sentiment. One person can hold this much love, for her husband, for her childhood first love, and for herself, that's sacred. As for Arthur and Hae Sung, it's about these two men who know her, When Nora talks in her sleep, Arthur tells her at one point, she speaks in Korean, stepping into a version of herself only in her dreams. If Arthur can never know that part of Nora, there's a different, more alienating sense of absence for Nora and Hae Sung. He's here to sort of lift the veil and see that that little girl is gone. Then, Nora goes back, left to right, in the direction from which she came. She will stand there for a moment, and then she's gonna go back home, and every step is going to be a walk towards the future from the past. You find yourself sitting at a bar sandwiched between two men from vastly different parts of your life. One is your husband, the other you childhood sweetheart. These two men love you in different ways, in two different languages and two different cultures. And you're the only reason why these two men are even talking to each other. There's something almost sci-fi about it. You feel like somebody who can transcend culture and time and space and language. It would be a mistake, though, to read this dynamic as an early scene of a melodramatic love triangle. Instead, The film turns this seed of experience into a quietly gutting film, concerned with something far more emotionally complex, the parts of a self that we lose as we become the people we're, and the ways our lives are shaped by those we love. And yet, the film is just as deeply emotional about the cosmic forces that shape our lives: if there's a bone-deep mourning over past selves, there's also the beauty in human connection, in the fact that a woman can find herself sitting with two surreally disparate parts of her lives, as if bending the rules of time and space. If there are 50 people in the room, you've 50 different reasons each of them have cried, and 50 different ways they’ve seen themselves. In all those ways of watching the film, there's actually no wrong answer, except for the one where you don't feel connected at all. Written by Gregory Mann Like 0 comments 0 Gregory Mann Dec 26, 2023 "Ferrari" written by Gregory Mann Film Reviews "Ferrari" It's the summer of 1957. Behind the spectacle of Formula 1, ex-racer Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is in crisis. Bankruptcy threatens the factory he and his wife, Laura (Penelope Cruz), built from nothing ten years earlier. Their volatile marriage has been battered by the loss of their son, Dino, a year earlier. Ferrari struggles to acknowledge his son Piero (Giuseppe Festinese) with Lina Lardi (Shai lens Woodley). Meanwhile, his drivers’ passion to win pushes them to the edge as they launch into the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia. Passion, ambition, power, the characteristics of Enzo Ferrari racecars came from within the man himself. From the beginning, they began to dominate the competition and fire imaginations worldwide. Born in Modena, Italy, the former racecar driver and team manager formed his own company in 1947. Built with almost no funding, Ferrari’s first car in its sixth race won the Rome Grand Prix. By 1957 the world’s greatest racers were vying for seats in Ferrari’s. Enzo and his wife, Laura, re-invested heavily in the racing division. As a result, by 1957 insolvency was stalking the factory. Meanwhile the tragic death of their only son, Dino, to mluscular dystrophy in 1956 has further shaken their rocky marriage. Dino was their center and future; now gone. Both grieve differently over the devastating loss. Meanwhile, Piero Lardi, Enzo’s son born in 1945 from his liaison with Linda Lardi, now seeks the acknowledgment of his father. Together they constitute a second family of which Laura is unaware until it’s revealed. As crises and revelations converge, Ferrari wagers all on winning one race, the supremely dangerous 1,000-mile race across open roads called the Mille Miglia. We all know it’s our deadly passion, our terrible joy. But if you get into one of Ferrari cars, and no one is forcing you to take that seat, you get in to win. Enzo Ferrari is one of the most famous, yet inscrutable and complex men of the 20th century. “Ferrari” moves behind the inscrutable image of the iconic Enzo Ferrari. Based on Brock Yates 1991 book 'Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Car, The Races, The Machine', the film is a character study. There's no equilibrium in his life, and that’s the whole point of Enzo Ferrari, because that’s more like the way life actually is. Ferrari was precise and logical; rational in everything to do with his factory and race team. In the rest of his life he was impulsive, defensive, libidinous, chaotic. The story is not a typical biopic. It seizes on the four months of Enzo Ferrari’s life, in 1957, when all the conflicts and fortunes, the drama of his and Laura and Lina’s lives come into focus. All the hurdles he faced in the mid-1950s, when motorsports was becoming a glamorous, international phenomenon. There's further duality in Ferrari’s life; his wife, Laura, was a woman hardened by struggle, grief, petrified love, and from being a woman involved in a business dominated by men. An early deal with Ferrari meant that Laura is a 50/50 partner in the Ferrari factory, which became even more complicated when the couple’s personal life became messy and cold, and Laura’s savvy business instincts emerged as one of the few avenues of control she had. The power Laura had over the Ferrari company would anger Enzo, and yet, when his engineering staff once threatened to quit if Laura continued to make production visits at the factory, Enzo fired all of them, the world’s greatest automotive engineers, on the spot, immediately, out of solidarity with Laura. Still, Laura is invested in Enzo’s success and the Ferrari team’s wins on the track. Meanwhile, Enzo met, Lina Lardi, whom he had met in a factory his native Modena, Italy, during World War II, anchored his life. When their son Piero was born in 1945, Lina raised him in Castelvetro. She was a post-war Italian single mother focused on what was right for her child despite his being born out of wedlock at a moment in history, and in a country, that didn’t accept divorce. It's about providing a safe space for her son to feel like he belonged in a world that, during that time, especially in Catholic Italy, told anyone under those circumstances that they didn’t belong. If Enzo Ferrari’s life was bifurcated into chaos and control, his life with Lina Lardi was a cause for one while embodying a desire for the other. When their affair began during the Second World War, Lardi had been working at a coachbuilding factory in Modena, and as Prime Minister Benito Mussolini’s fascist policies and World War II ravaged Italy, Ferrari and Lardi’s relationship grew. In the disarray of post-war Italy and the hardships that followed, Lardi raised their son, Piero. Lina is a woman at the crossroads of two lives that existed outside of her own, and she was a bit helpless in that situation; all Lina could do was show support and love for her son and the man that she loved. In Lina’s most forthright moment in the film, she confronts Enzo on his hesitancy to acknowledge Piero with his last name (due to Laura’s legal maneuvers and Italian cultural considerations, Piero was not able to be acknowledged as a member of the Ferrari family until after Laura’s death in 1978). The complexities and emotions involved were tumultuous, but Lina’s view is that what matters most is what’s best for Piero, and that has loved by Enzo as his son. The difficulty of having two families, and two homes, one filled with grief over the loss of a son who hadn’t lived past the age of 24, the other focused on making a 12-year-old boy’s life free from pain and want, crashes into Enzo Ferrari’s pursuit of engineering perfection. He sees all too clearly the risk of losing all he’s built, either to companies like Fiat and Ford who were looking to buy him out, or through personal issues that threatened to overtake his life’s work. In 1957, Ferrari was going broke; the company’s passenger car sales had dwindled as competitors began breaking his cars speed records, making it harder to secure funding. All of that fueled Ferrari’s competitive nature even more. Ferrari would take a huge gamble with the fortunes of his company by entering the 1957 Mille Miglia, the famous 1,000-mile, open-road endurance race through Italy that had begun in 1927. Thirty years after its inaugural race, it was about to collide with a form of blind ambition Ferrari isn’t ready to be accountable for. His aim, going into this dangerous race, is to put together a multigenerational, flashy driving team that would attract financing to keep the Ferrari factory in business, and which would allow Ferrari to maintain control. But the cost would be high. Moving to the racetrack, chief among the team of drivers surrounding Enzo Ferrari would be Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), whose horrific crash in the final stretch of Italy’s Mille Miglia, which killed de Portago and nine spectators, would for decades overshadow the legacy of the race and be part of the reason it ended in 1957. Eugenio Castellotti (Marino Franchitti) dies while attempting to reclaim Ferrari’s speed record from Maserati. Sound is also crucial in the de Portago crash sequence. At the moment of impact, the sound almost disappears, leaving a dull, closed-ear vibe to the sounds that follow. The concept is to have the impact noises as the car is plowing into the pole and through the crowd diminish over time. Piero began working with his father in the late 1960s and collaborated with the company’s Formula One teams, as well as in the concept and production process, and other aspects of production. When Enzo Ferrari died in 1988, Piero inherited his father’s stake in the company. Piero served as president of the Ferrari company until 2015. There's the world of Enzo’s more intimate, domestic life, at home with Laura or in the countryside with Lina, and then there's the world of racing. The former would be a more classically composed aesthetic, while the latter would be filled with visceral, dynamic energy often through handheld camerawork. Italian Renaissance painting is so informed by architecture and the natural light that Italian architecture of that period lends to a space. It’s all this single-source, directional lighting from the windows. As for the color palette, the yellows, oranges, pale greens and terracotta/ochre hues of Northern Italy set the template. The concept is to slash through that palette with the bright, primary red of the cars, signifying aggression and energy in the face of the more austere aesthetic elsewhere in the film. The cars are kinetic, they’re full of agitation. The film wants to show the experience of what it's to drive one of those cars and to be in a tense race, trying to master the forces. It's, by design, a counterpoint to the formality of the dramatic, dialogue-filled scenes. There are incredibly powerful human moments, then we’re roaring around Italy with drivers flirting with death. In so many places around the world, it’s still a very similar situation, working from the shadows and not being acknowledged for what they do, not being valued. It’s as if youve mild chronic pain, only it’s emotional, but it's important for us to see that represented in many ways, but especially physically. Life is asymmetrical. Life is messy. Life is filled with chaos. Written by Gregory Mann Like 0 comments 0 Forum - Frameless Film Reviews UK

Watch Fat Boy at the 2022 UK Film Review Festival. See the UKFRF 2022 lineup and buy your festival pass. Fat Boy Listen to our review on the film podcast What our film review said: READ FULL REVIEW This film is a rollercoaster ride that is filled with heartbreaking cruelty and contains tension that rises and rises until it reaches boiling point. It raises awareness of bullying and the devastating effects it has on people and it is worthy of recognition. Proudly supporting MediCinema for our 2022 film festival.

Joyce Cowan writes movie reviews for UK Film Critic. As one of the talented UK film critics, find out more here. Joyce Cowan Joyce Cowan is a film critic at UK Film Critic providing movie reviews of short and indie films. Follow On Twitter Read My Film Reviews

Isabelle Ryan writes movie reviews for UK Film Critic. As one of the talented UK film critics, find out more here. Isabelle Ryan Film critic for UK Film Review. Follow On Twitter Read My Film Reviews

Watch Anonymous at the 2022 UK Film Review Festival. See the UKFRF 2022 lineup and buy your festival pass. Anonymous Listen to our review on the film podcast What our film review said: READ FULL REVIEW Written and directed by Alasdair Mackay, Anonymous is an in-depth drama which considers the strength that it takes to give up the demons that come with addiction. Set in real time, this feature film is brooding and quiet at first, but goes on to tackle some hard-hitting events that change the course of a group of people’s entire night. Proudly supporting MediCinema for our 2022 film festival.

Watch Clout at the 2022 UK Film Review Festival. See the UKFRF 2022 lineup and buy your festival pass. Clout Listen to our review on the film podcast What our film review said: READ FULL REVIEW Filmed almost entirely through webcams, this intriguing drama provides an informative insight into the power of the internet and social media by showing how these two can influence people and what the life of a YouTuber is like. The narratives focuses on a lonely and depressed individual, who initially creates and uploads videos of her everyday experiences as way to escape her unhappy life. Proudly supporting MediCinema for our 2022 film festival.

Watch Powdered Dandelions at the 2022 UK Film Review Festival. See the UKFRF 2022 lineup and buy your festival pass. Powdered Dandelions Listen to our review on the film podcast What our film review said: READ FULL REVIEW Whilst Powdered Dandelions may not have the same ethical quandaries as Catfish the popularity of this theme with younger adults forms an interesting and concerning cultural marker for where we are as a society. A well-crafted visual style and an excellent performance from Virago make Powdered Dandelions a heartfelt and moving short that effectively drills down into the public consciousness. Proudly supporting MediCinema for our 2022 film festival.

Watch The Find at the 2022 UK Film Review Festival. See the UKFRF 2022 lineup and buy your festival pass. The Find Listen to our review on the film podcast What our film review said: READ FULL REVIEW The filmmakers effectively capture the sound of waves, almost making the viewer feel like they are by the ocean. The dramatic music is another magnificent addition and includes piano score. This is a very well made film, with an intriguing plot and dramatic atmosphere. It is an interesting viewing that deserves praise and recognition. Proudly supporting MediCinema for our 2022 film festival.

Watch Pandemic Spy at the 2022 UK Film Review Festival. See the UKFRF 2022 lineup and buy your festival pass. Pandemic Spy Listen to our review on the film podcast What our film review said: READ FULL REVIEW Pandemic Spy ’s aesthetics are overtly influenced by the work of Edgar Wright. The quick pans, modulation of movement speeds, and slick, fast-paced editing give it a comic tone that feels familiar. More layers are added by allowing interplay between Fisher and the audience. He is granted a noir-style retrospective narration as well as the ability to break the fourth wall. This works as Livermore is instantly likeable and his charisma makes even the exploration of the darker side of the pandemic feel bearable. Proudly supporting MediCinema for our 2022 film festival.