Reviews on the Best UK Movies of All Time
Top British Films
Alice Lowe in Prevenge, which she wrote, directed and acted in while pregnant In her debut film Prevenge, writer-director Alice Lowe takes a blowtorch to the picture postcard image of pregnancy. In this deliciously twisted serial killer black comedy, she plays the 30-something, very pregnant, Ruth. If things weren’t hard enough for Ruth, trying to […]
Director: John Nguyen 1h 30min | Documentary | March 2017 (USA) Playing London Film Festival 2016 RATING: ★★★★☆ Lynch fans are being well-served at this year’s London Film Festival, with director John Nguyen’s David Lynch: The Art Life being one of two documentaries about the mercurial director playing here. This will be catnip for the […]
Director: Mike Birbiglia R | 1h 32min | Comedy, Drama | 22 July 2016 (USA) Playing London Film Festival 2016 RATING: ★★★★☆ This delightfully warm, yet also poignant comedy hails from the mind of writer/director and comedian Mike Birbiglia, who impressed the Smoke Screen with his debut film Sleepwalk with Me. Drawing on elements from […]
Director: Alice Lowe 1h 28min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy | 13 October 2016 (UK) Playing London Film Festival 2016 RATING: ★★★★☆ In her debut film Prevenge, writer-director Alice Lowe takes a blowtorch to the picture postcard image of pregnancy. In this deliciously twisted serial killer black comedy, she plays the 30-something and very pregnant, Ruth, […]
Director: Kenneth Lonergan R | 2h 15min | Drama | 13 January 2017 (UK) Playing London Film Festival 2016 RATING: ★★★★☆ Though its plot – about a haunted man’s painful hometown return to take on the task of becoming his nephew’s guardian – might sound on paper a one-way ticket to either redemptive melodrama or […]
Director: Jim Jarmusch R | 1h 53min | Comedy, Drama | 25 November 2016 (UK) Playing London Film Festival 2016 RATING: ★★★★★ Adam Driver swaps the robes and lightsabre of the Star Wars universe for a more low-key, ruminative role in Jim Jarmusch’s endearing, richly textured new drama, Paterson. Dialled-back even by Jarmusch’s usual, laconic […]
Director: Peter Braatz 1h 26min | Documentary, Music | 7 October 2016 (UK) Playing London Film Festival 2016 RATING: ★★★★☆ This year’s London Film Festival is certainly catnip for David Lynch fans, with Peter Braatz’s Blue Velvet Revisited being just one of several documentaries focusing on the mercurial director’s career. This film isn’t a forensic […]
Director: Maren Ade R | 2h 42min | Comedy, Drama | 3 February 2017 (UK) RATING: ★★★★☆ laying London Film Festival 2016 Browbeaten children often complain that our parents are put on this earth to torment us, but with Toni Erdmann, the new, off-kilter black comedy from German film-maker Maren Ade, the generational torment is […]
UK-USA 1995 Directed by Richard Loncraine 103 min Digital 15 Playing in the BFI’s Shakespeare on Film Season. RATING: ★★★★★ Back on the big screen in a new Park Circus digital restoration, and part of the BFI Shakespeare on Film Season, Richard III is looking mighty fine at age 21. A bombastic and zippily-paced adaption […]
This was not the review that Smoke Screen expected to write, returning from the preview night of the new run of Secret Cinema Presents: 28 Days Later. In keeping with the previous ‘presents’ instalments of this pricey but cash-generating strand of the Secret franchise, this particular strand advertises the film in advance, making the secret […]