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Train Dreams (2025) Review – A Quiet Portrait of Loss and Endurance
In one sentence: Train Dreams follows a solitary labourer in the early twentieth-century American West who endures profound personal tragedies while witnessing a rapidly changing world that seems to move on without him. Netflix’s Oscar nominated entry is far removed from its usual output, offering instead a quiet, meditative character study set against the transformation…
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F1 (2025) Review – Fast Cars, Familiar Course
In one sentence: F1 follows an ageing racing driver who is lured back onto the Formula One circuit to help rescue a struggling team, forcing him to confront his past, his limitations and a fiercely competitive young teammate. Summer blockbusters are not typically the Academy’s favourites, but perhaps the tides are beginning to turn. With…
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Adore (2013) Review – Tides of Desire
In one sentence: Adore follows two lifelong friends who find their bond tested when each begins a secret affair with the other’s son, setting in motion a tangled web of love, loyalty and taboo desire. Cinema frequently explores forbidden love, but rarely with the ambiguous morality and emotional nuance found in Adore. The film challenges…
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The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) Review – A Musical That Rains Emotion
In one sentence: A pair of young lovers are separated by war and circumstance, discovering that first love does not always survive the realities of adulthood. Few films suit a grey, rain-soaked day quite like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. With its constant drizzle, luminous colours and one of cinema’s most beautiful soundtracks, this 1960s classic…
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Master Cheng (2019) Review – A Slow Burn Served with Heart
In one sentence: When a widowed Chinese chef and his young son arrive in a quiet Finnish town searching for a mysterious contact, an unexpected kitchen partnership sparks healing, friendship and a gently unfolding love story. Not every film needs high stakes or dramatic twists to leave an impact. Master Cheng proves that a story…
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Pillion (2025) Review – When Intimacy Defies Expectation
In one sentence: Pillion shows a shy, sheltered man who enters into a consensual dom/sub relationship with an aloof biker, forcing both characters and audience to confront uncomfortable questions about power, intimacy and choice. Queer romance has increasingly found space in mainstream cinema, which is both welcome and necessary. Pillion, adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’ novel…
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One Battle After Another (2025) Review – Revolution Without Rest
In one sentence: One Battle After Another follows a former revolutionary forced back into conflict when the past he tried to escape comes violently for his daughter. Cinema often treats conflict as something external, a battle to be fought and resolved, but One Battle After Another is more interested in conflict as a way of…
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Hamnet (2026) Review – A Raw Meditation on Grief
In one sentence: Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s best selling novel, Hamnet explores the impact of the death of Shakespeare’s young son and how this loss was transformed into art through grief, memory and loss. Often we watch films hoping to be surprised, but Hamnet is not interested in twists. Its power lies instead in emotional…
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Rental Family (2026) Review – Performing Connection in a Lonely World
In one sentence: Rental Family follows a struggling American actor in Tokyo who finds unexpected purpose when he begins performing emotional roles in real people’s lives, blurring the line between acting and genuine connection. In a world that feels more connected than ever, many people are quietly lonelier and cinema has become a space to…
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Balloon (2018) Review – A Remarkable True Escape
In one sentence: Balloon tells the astonishing true story of two families who attempt to escape across the Iron Curtain in a homemade hot air balloon. Mark Twain once said “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t”and no quote could ring truer for German…
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