THE DAVID PARKINSON FILM BLOG

(Review of Just an Illusion) 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 (2019), and A Difficult Year (2023), although not all have reached UK ci

(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)

(Reviews of A Private Life; Blue Heron; Virginia Woolf's Night & Day; and The Last Viking) A PRIVATE LIFE. In her 15-year directing career to date, Rebecca Zlotowski has explored the pressures placed on young women in Belle Épine (2010) and An Easy Girl (2019) and mothers in Other People's Children (2022). She has also twinned passion and radiation in Grand Central (2013) and séances and cinema in Planetarium (2016). Now, she touches on psychiatry and secrets in A Private Lif

(Reviews of Effi o Blaenau; Familiar Touch; Girlfriends; Lesbian Space Princess; and Killing Anna) EFFI O BLAENAU.\ Since debuting with House of America (1997), Marc Evans has been a leading champion of Welsh cinema. Although he has not focussed exclusively on the Principality, features like Patagonia (2010), Hunky Dory (2012), and Mr Burton (2024), as well as the football documentary, Jack to a King: The Swansea Story (2014), have captured the pride, personality, and passion

(Reviews of Kapodistrias; Merrily We Roll Along; and Time and Water) KAPODISTRIAS. History is impossible to replicate on screen. The best a viewer can hope for is an honest presentation of the facts. But this rarely happens, as the re-creators of the past always have a point to make or an angle to exploit. Even the best historical biopics reflect the preconceptions and preoccupations of their writer, director, and/or producer. There will always be omissions, distortions, and

(Reviews of Enzo; Köln 75; Bonnie & Clive;; and Acting) ENZO. Laurent Cantet and Robin Campillo go back a long way. Having edited Cantet's Les Sanguinaires (1997) and Human Resources (1999), Campillo served as his co-writer/editor on Time Out (2001), Heading South (2005), The Class (2006), and Foxfire (2012) before he edited Return to Ithaca (2014) and co-wrote The Workshop (2017). So, when the cancer that killed him prevented Cantet from starting work on Nino, it was natural

(Reviews of Illusione; Leonora in the Morning Light; and No Place For Football) ILLUSIONE. At the outset of her directorial career, Francesca Archibugi had a love affair with the Donatello Awards. She won Best New Director with her feature bow, Mignon Has Come to Stay (1988), and Best Film with both Towards Evening (1990) and The Great Pumpkin (1993). The major awards might have dried up, but Archibugi has remained one of Italy's most respected film-makers, with dramas like W

(Reviews of Hen; Eagles of the Republic; The Christophers; The Balloonists; and Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass) HEN. Following in the hoofprints of Jerzy Skolimowski's EO (2022), György Pálfi's Hen presents the world from an animal's perspective. British audiences haven't seen much of the Hungarian director after he started out so impressively with Hukkle (2002) and Taxidermia (2006). In the intervening 20 years, Pálfi has produced five features: I Am Not Your Friend (2009)

(Reviews of Northern Soul: Still Burning; and Sailm nan Daoine (Psalms of the People)) NORTHERN SOUL: STILL BURNING. Few local phenomena have been fawned over as much as Northern Soul. Since ace musicologist Tony Palmer rocked up in town best known for Rugby League to film ` The Wigan Casino' for Granada's This England programme in 1977, there has been a glut of nostalgic remembrances. Following John D. Moore's The Way of the Crowd (2004), Wayne Allen and Alan Byron made such

(Reviews of Romería; and Our Land) ROMERÍA. Having impressed with on debut with Summer 1993 (2017) and won the Golden Bear at Berlin for Alcarràs (2022), Catalan director Carla Simón returns with Romería. Taking its title from the Spanish word for `pilgrimage', this is another obviously autobiographical work and could be seen as a spiritual sequel to Simón's neophyte recollection of her childhood. Once again displaying an intuitively evocative sense of place, this is a deeply

(Reviews of Wild Foxes; Olivia; Power to the People: John & Yoko in NYC; Ada: My Mother the Architect - ALSO; Departures; Surviving Earth; and Ultras) WILD FOXES. As a recent BFI Southbank season demonstrated, film-makers have found boxing an irresistible subject. Indeed, cinema owes the sport a good deal, as the Latham brothers invented a loop that prevented celluloid strips from tearing in the camera/projector (and, thus, enabled longer films), in order to shoot The Corbett