Tag Archives: drama

Review no 59: Capernaum, film by Nadine Labaki (Lebanon)

NORTH AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA This is a beautifully realised but harrowing 2018 film, directed and co-written by Nadine Labaki, and nominated in the category of Best Foreign Language Film in the 91st Academy Awards. The film made the shortlist, although it eventually lost out to Mexican film Roma. According to Wikipedia, Capernaum (a …

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Review no 40: Jojo Rabbit, film by Taika Waititi (New Zealand)

FAR EAST, SOUTH ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA **** Early reviews of this 2019 film suggested it was a “Marmite” movie: you were either going to love it or hate it, no half measures. I’d watched Waititi’s earlier features, including the hugely entertaining What we do in the Shadows (2014, a mock reality TV documentary about vampires) …

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Review no 32: The Chambermaid, film by Lila Avilés (Mexico)

AMERICAS AND THE CARIBBEAN The Chambermaid (La Camarista), released in 2019, came up as a special offer, “film of the day” rental on the excellent Curzon home cinema app (a recent discovery), and I decided to give it a watch. My original plan had been to watch Roma (2018) as my Mexican film. With its …

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Review no 22: Monos (Monkeys), film by Alejandro Landes (Colombia)

AMERICAS AND THE CARIBBEAN This new release (2019), directed and co-written by Alejandro Landes, is like Lord of the Flies on shrooms. Monos is an exciting, visceral and disturbing film, which has been selected by Colombia as its entry for the upcoming Oscars in the category of International Feature Film. In October 2019 the film …

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