THE DAVID PARKINSON FILM BLOG

(Reviews of Gentle Monster; City of Masks; and Bad Day At the Office) GENTLE MONSTER. Here is a film with a backstory. In 2022, director Marie Kreutzer released Corsage, an exceptional study of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria that paired the typically compelling Vicky Krieps with the respected Florian Teichtmeister, as Franz Josef II. When reports emerged in January 2023 that Teichtmeister had been caught in possession of child pornography, Kreutzer contacted the actor to se

(Reviews of Five Seconds; Children of the Wicker Man; and All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea ) FIVE SECONDS. The son of a Sicilian policeman, Paolo Virzì developed a love of literature during his Livorno childhood before studying under the great screenwriter, Furio Scarpelli at Rome's fabled film school, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. A number of shorts and features from this period have seemingly disappeared. But Virzì returned to directing after serving his w

(Reviews of Case 137; It's My Time; Deadline; and The Influencer Project) CASE 137. Between winning the César for Best Director for Harry, He's Here to Help (2000) and The Night of the 12th (2022), it's fair to say that Dominik Moll has enjoyed mixed fortunes. Although Lemming (2005) opened the Cannes Film Festival, it divided critics, while The Monk (2011), News From Planet Mars (2016), and Only the Animals (2019) were little seen in the UK. He's on fine form, however, with

(An overview of the 70th BFI London Film Festival, 8-18 October ) Britain's second oldest film festival reaches a significant landmark this month. Now sponsored by the British Film Institute, the London Film Festival turns 70 with a programme containing 251 films from 88 countries that will play at various venues across the capital (and a few outside) between 8-18 October. Among the 169 features on view are 16 international premieres and 20 European premieres. As usual, there

(Reviews of The Lost Children of Tuam; Comédie Française; The Yellow Tie; and Child) THE LOST CHILDREN OF TUAM. It's noticeable that previous films about Ireland's notorious Mother and Baby Homes have been directed by outsiders like Scot Peter Mullan (The Magdalene Sisters, 2002), Englishman Stephen Frears (Philomena, 2013), and Belgian Tim Melants (Small Things Like These, 2024). Adapted from Dan Barry's 2017 New York Times article, The Lost Children of Tuam has, however, be

(Reviews of Extra Geography; Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie; Derek vs Derek; Kikuyu Land; and Cotton Queen) EXTRA GEOGRAPHY. Since making her first short, Here Boy (2016), Molly Manners has worked on such BBC3 series as In My Skin (2021) and Lazy Susan (2022), and won a BAFTA for Netflix's One Day (2024). Moving swiftly on from The Perfect Gift, her 2025 Waitrose commercial with Keira Knightley and Joe Wilkinson, she has now made her feature bow with Extra Geog

(Reviews of Remake; Babystar; Quasi Grazia; and North Sea, Nature Untamed) REMAKE. Documentarist Ross McElwee trained under cinéma vérité pioneers Richard Leacock and Ed Pincus and worked as a cameraman for Direct Cinema maestro, D.A. Pennebaker. His observational films have always blended the profound and the personal, with Sherman's March (1986) combining American history, Cold War reality, and McElwee's romantic entanglements. His parenting skills came under scrutiny in Si

(Reviews of Queen At Sea; Premature; The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream; and The Cycle of Love) QUEEN AT SEA. Eighteen years have passed since Lance Hammer made an impressive feature debut with Ballast (2008). The theme of family members forging an unexpected connection in the wake of tragic events recurs in his sophomore outing, Queen At Sea, which earned the Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, where Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marsh

(Review of Exhibition on Screen: James McNeill Whistler) It's been a while since the last Exhibition on Screen offering, but the wait has been worthwhile, as David Bickerstaff's James McNeill Whistler is a fine addition to an invaluable series. Inspired by the acclaimed retrospective due to end soon at Tate Britain, this is the fourth feature to focus on an American artist, after Hopper: An American Love Story (2022), Mary Cassatt: Painting the Modern Woman (2023), and John S

(Reviews of Just an Illusion; Everybody Digs Bill Evans; and Don't Forget About Me. Eddie Cochran) JUST AN ILLUSION. Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache have been making films together for over three decades. They will forever be known for the multi-award-winning drama, The Intouchables (2011). But there has been much to ponder in their other features, Let's Be Friends (2005), Those Happy Days (2006), So Happy Together (2009), Samba (2014), C'est la vie! (2017), The Specials (2

(Reviews of Lomu; Super Nature; and The Pout-Pout Fish) LOMU. In cinemas for a single day on 7 September, Vea Mafile'o and Gavin Fitzgerald's Lomu is a sincere, if saddening tribute to the All Black who became rugby's first global superstar in the 1990s. Using previously unseen home movies and with access to family members and those who played alongside Jonah Lomu, this is a cautionary tale at the start of a new season about the pressures placed on players both on and off the

(Reviews of Bitter Christmas; Hanging By a Wire; and Landship) BITTER CHRISTMAS. For his 24th feature, Pedro Almodóvar returns to Spanish in Bitter Christmas, after the English-language detours of the shorts, The Human Voice (2020) and Strange Way of Life (2023), and the 2024 feature, The Room Next Door, which had paired Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore. A treatise on `art imitating life imitating art', it follows Pain and Glory (2019) in drawing on the highly distinctive dir

(Reviews of & Sons; Sunny Dancer; and Holy Days) & SONS. Pablo Trapero was one of the leading lights of New Argentine Cinema, thanks to such fine features as El Bonaerense (2002), Familia Rodante (2004), Lion's Den (2008), and Carancho (2010). Despite winning the Best Director prize at Venice for The Clan (2015), less fuss was made in the UK of either White Elephant (2012) or La Quietud (2018). But Trapero returns to make his English-language debut with & Sons, which has been

(Reviews of Songs of Forgotten Trees; Lady; Momo and the Time Thieves; and Mermaid Beach) SONGS OF FORGOTTEN TREES. In September 2025, Anuparna Roy became the first Indian to win the Best Director prize in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival. Now, her debut feature, Songs of Forgotten Trees, reaches UK cinemas. Running just 77 minutes, it still manages to offer potent insights into such issues as urban alienation, male entitlement, past associations, the shaping

(Reviews of Love Me Tender; The Summer Book; Hunt For the Wilderpeople; and A Dairy Story) LOVE ME TENDER. Following her debut feature, Gold For Dogs (2021), 35 year-old Fémis graduate Anna Cazenave Cambet draws on an autofictional novel by former lawyer Constance Debré for her sophomore outing, Love Me Tender. Nominated for the Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, this thoughtful treatise on how motherhood impacts upon personal identity and the perceptions of others provi

(Review is Ish) ISH. `If you don't decide who you are, other people gonna decide for you,' says one of the two teenage protagonists in Ish, a potent, but poignant rite of passage inspired by feature debutant Imran Perretta's own experiences. It's the summer holidays and 12 year-olds Ishmail (Farhan Hasnat) and Maram (Yahya Kitana) are hanging in the woods outside Luton. Bantering in roadman-speak, they pick blackberries and make a den out of a discarded mattress and some plas

(Reviews of Ask E. Jean; Cucinelli: The Gracious Visionary; and On the Sea) ASK E. JEAN. Documentarist Ivy Meeropol is best known for two films about her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. She examined the impact on the family of their capital conviction of spying for the Soviet Union in Heir to an Execution (2004), while Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (2019) focussed on the man who had prosecuted them. The latter also examined Cohn's influence on Donald

(Reviews of Life Support; Synthetic Sincerity; and A Year in London) LIFE SUPPORT. Since debuting with The Olympic Side of London (2012), Italian-born, London-based documentarist Daniele Rugo has explored violence and social change in Lebanon in About a War (co-directed Abi Weaver, 2019) and the grim reality of 100 mass graves left behind by the civil war in The Soil and the Sea (2023). Now, he turns his attention to Gaza in Life Support, a collection of testimonies from 11 v

(Review of The Last One For the Road; and Misan Harriman: Shoot the People) THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD. Italian road comedies are something of a rarity. Among the best set on the peninsula are Dino Risi's Il sorpasso (1962), Mario Monicelli's Lovers and Liars (1979), Alberto Sordi's In viaggio con papà (1982), Enrico Oldoini's Una botta di vita (1988), Gabriele Salvatores's On Tour (1990), Rocco Papaleo's Basilicata Coast to Coast (2010), while Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be

(Reviews of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie; Birds of War; and Roberto Rossellini: Living Without a Script) NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE. Some will know Canadian director Matt Johnson for such admired features as The Dirties (2013), Operation Avalanche (2016), and BlackBerry (2023). A few others might know him from the DIY web series, Nirvana the Band (2007-09), which he worked up into a short-lived Viceland TV show entitled Nirvanna the Band the Show (2017-18)