Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) Director: Céline Sciamma Screenwriter: Céline Sciamma Starring: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami “I’m saying that there’ll be good things too.” “You’re saying that every now and then I’ll be consoled.” Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire has quietly become one of the defining films of … Read more

Film criticism thrives on subjectivity. Movies are composed of many elements—performance, direction, cinematography, sound, narrative—that can be assembled to suggest meanings audiences may accept, reject or reinterpret. Absences and silences can be just as revealing as what’s on screen. Because of this, any film can be read in multiple ways and occasionally a single interpretation … Read more

In 1984, director Wes Craven—already known for unsettling films like The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes—gave the horror world a new icon. Freddy Krueger, the razor-gloved nightmare stalker memorably embodied by Robert Englund, transformed sleep into a terror-filled battleground. Over a series of sequels, a crossover and a remake, Freddy’s … Read more

The Film Magazine roundup of the week’s main film news, covering Monday 30th September to Sunday 6th October 2019. Jordan Peele, the Oscar-winning writer-director behind Us(2019) and Get Out (2017), has signed a five-year first-look deal with Universal. Under the agreement, Universal will distribute films developed by Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, including two new projects that … Read more

Joker (2019) Director: Todd Phillips Screenwriter: Todd Phillips, Scott Silver Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Marc Maron “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?” After the fanfare, the awards, and the controversies that … Read more

The 2010s were a transformative decade for the horror genre. After the J-horror and “torture porn” trends of the 2000s, the decade that followed brought a wave of original, stylistically bold films—especially in the latter half of the ten years. Many movies that once might have been relegated to cult status through DVD or VHS … Read more

How a character is first introduced on screen matters. Whether it’s the hero, the villain, a vivid supporting player or a brief cameo, that first moment shapes how the audience understands and remembers them. These opening scenes teach us to love, hate, fear or sympathize with characters in ways that guide the rest of the … Read more

The Last Tree (2019) Director: Shola Amoo Screenwriter: Shola Amoo Starring: Sam Adewunmi, Denise Black, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Nicholas Pinnock Shola Amoo, who drew praise for his debut feature A Moving Image (2016), returns with The Last Tree, a thoughtful British drama that follows a young Black man growing up amid poverty, class tension and racial … Read more

The Farewell (2019) Director: Lulu Wang Screenwriter: Lulu Wang Starring: Awkwafina, Zhao Shuzhen, Diana Lin, Tzi Ma, Lu Hong Overview At first glance, The Farewell might seem to follow familiar indie-family dramedy territory: a creatively inclined protagonist, fraught family relationships and a mix of awkward comedy with an unconventional examination of grief. It would be … Read more

Ad Astra (2019) Director: James Gray Screenwriters: James Gray, Ethan Gross Starring: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland The film opens in the hushed, delicate void of space, where the black of the cosmos frames the vivid blue and white of Earth. Brad Pitt’s Roy McBride, a seasoned astronaut and systems engineer, … Read more