Reviews by Andrew Robertson

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  The Iron Mask (2019)

  Review preview for The Iron Mask

  This is a film whose bombast and ambition is compromised by the fact that it clearly never met an idea it didn't like.

  An English traveller journeys from Russia to China in the 18th century, encountering dragons, black magic wizardry and a dragon king.
• 
  Danger Close (2019)

  Review preview for Danger Close

  There are good performances made of small moments throughout.

  The true story of the Anzac's Battle of Long Tan in Vietnam.
• 
  Clover (2020)

  Review preview for Clover

  While it's good to learn from your own mistakes, it can be significantly funnier to watch someone else's.

  Two brothers who owe money to the mob go on the run with a teenage girl, hunted by assassins.
• 
  The Other Lamb (2019)

  Review preview for The Other Lamb

  The Other Lamb is oneiric, pareidoliac, one where faces are painted and set, possessed of an immediate mythic weight.

  A young girl begins to question her place in the religious community she was born into.
• 
  The Translators (2019)

  Review preview for The Translators

  This starts as a chamber mystery about blackmail where everyone involved is massively aware of genre conventions, and from there furls and folds into something else.

  To ensure absolute secrecy for the global publication of a bestseller, nine skilled translators are invited to a remote location. They are given a number of pages to translate each day. There is no contact with the outside world. Then the publisher receives a blackmail demand, threatening to release the manuscript online.
• 
  True History Of The Kelly Gang (2019)

  Review preview for True History Of The Kelly Gang

  It may be one of the finest performances you see this year, and see it you should.

  Born into a family of poor Irish immigrants, Ned grows into an angry young man, constantly at odds with colonial authority. Ruthless bush ranger Harry Power becomes a father figure/mentor as Kelly embraces his destiny as gang leader, folk hero and legend.
• 
  Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2019)

  Review preview for Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker

  This is perhaps less a swansong than a familiar sunset

  The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once more in the final chapter of the Skywalker saga.
• 
  Tungrus (2018)

  Review preview for Tungrus

  It attracts and deserves warm laughter, far less awkward in its soaring than the feathered flight of its antagonist.

  In a cramped Mumbai apartment, a family considers eating their hell-raising pet rooster, in order to reclaim their lives.
• 
  Leto (2018)

  Review preview for Leto

  There's a good rule of thumb about the quality of a film being inversely proportionate to the number of writers, but Leto's five have summoned something darling and deep, complex and not confused.

  A love triangle emerges around a rock and roll musician, his protege and his wife in Eighties Russia.
• 
  Skin (2018)

  Review preview for Skin

  There are some powerful moments in Skin, but however lasting some of its impacts the film isn't as deep as it hopes.

  The true story of white supremacist skinhead Bryon Widner and his attempts to leave his extreme right-wing past behind.
• 
  Marianne & Leonard: Words Of Love (2019)

  Review preview for Marianne & Leonard: Words Of Love

  There's a genuine beauty here - this is as much a love letter to love as it is the story of a complicated relationship and the branches (Broomfield included) that sprang from it.

  A story of enduring love between Leonard Cohen and his Norwegian muse Marianne Ihlen. The film follows their relationship from the early days in Greece, a time of ‘free love’ and open marriage, to how their love evolved when Leonard became a successful musician.
• 
  Gwen (2018)

  Review preview for Gwen

  There is magic here.

  In 19th Century Snowdonia, a young girl tries to hold her home and family together as a mining company encroach on their land.
• 
  Never Look Away (2018)

  Review preview for Never Look Away

  The blurring of fictionalisation is just one of the layers that encourages contemplation almost deep enough to justify the film's expansive canvas.

  A tormented young German artist who has fled to the west becomes convinced he has met the love of his life.
• 
  Robert The Bruce (2019)

  Review preview for Robert The Bruce

  For all that there are premonitions, dreams, even a witch, in truth this is a film without magic

  The story of the Scottish king.
• 
  Jaén, Virgin And Extra (2018)

  Review preview for Jaén, Virgin And Extra

  Gentle, entertaining, functional.

  Documentary about the Jaén region and olive oil.
• 
  Being And Nothingness (2019)

  Review preview for Being And Nothingness

  This is a dark and crisp little tale, like an icy night.

  A teenager relocated to rural Wyoming sets her sights on a local ranch hand.
• 
  Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019)

  Review preview for Memory: The Origins of Alien

  There are some good stories - various myths around the filming of Alien are punctured, but one of the film's central theses is a mythological one.

  The untold origin story behind Ridley Scott’s Alien – rooted in Greek and Egyptian mythologies, underground comics, the art of Francis Bacon, and the dark visions of Dan O’Bannon and HR Giger.
• 
  Lonely In The Dusk (2018)

  Review preview for Lonely In The Dusk

  I'll give it some credit for looking quite as good as it does.

  Released from a psychiatric hospital where she was 'treated' for her homosexuality, a deaf mute young woman goes looking for her first love.
• 
  Bodies At Rest (2019)

  Review preview for Bodies At Rest

  There's a lot of things going on here, but it's a talented cast and crew playing firmly within a set of genre tropes, not painting by numbers.

  Action adventure sees a morgue taken over by gunmen.
• 
  Five Families (2019)

  Review preview for Five Families

  There's a certain flavour here, well executed.

  A semi-retired associate of the Jewish mafia in Los Angeles tries to save his young grandson from a life of crime as three corrupt cops crack down on local criminals
• 
  2040 (2019)

  Review preview for 2040

  This is a grand vision, grandly executed, and like the solutions it depicts it exists today.

  The intrepid creator of the documentary That Sugar Film sets off on another journey, this time to scour the world for solutions and measures to combat climate change.
• 
  Yesterday (2019)

  Review preview for Yesterday

  Is it possible to make an interesting film where only one man remembers The Beatles? Probably. Is this it? Probably not.

  Musical comedy sees a singer-songwriter wake after a global blackout to discover a world where The Beatles never existed.
• 
  Those Who Are Fine (2017)

  Review preview for Those Who Are Fine

  Taut, tense, perhaps less constructed than engineered.

  A call centre worker begins to work a scam on the elderly.
• 
  Irene's Ghost (2018)

  Review preview for Irene's Ghost

  I commend this film to you, entreat you to see it.

  A filmmaker explores the life of the mother who died when he was just three years old.
• 
  Where Are We Now (2016)

  Review preview for Where Are We Now

  The honesty and simplicity of this picture were then indicative of talent.

  Documentary about the relationship between a daughter and trans-parent as they embark on the road to transition.
• 
  Bait (2019)

  Review preview for Bait

  Bait looks, sounds, feels amazing.

  Martin is a cove fisherman whose brother has started using their father’s boat to shuttle tourists, soon causing latent familial tensions to explode.
• 
  Vulture (2019)

  Review preview for Vulture

  The chemistry of film and filming is such that it makes something special.

  Consideration of farm animals.
• 
  Bludgeon (2018)

  Review preview for Bludgeon

  In trying to walk a line between geek and jock it paints (and washes and drybrushes) itself into a corner.

  Documentary about competitive medieval combat.
• 
  Boyz In The Wood (2019)

  Review preview for Boyz In The Wood

  It's laugh out loud funny in places, and there's an endearing earnestness throughout.

  An anarchic cocktail of generational politics, hip-hop loving farmers and hallucinogenic rabbit shites, set in the highlands of Scotland.
• 
  Run Free (2018)

  Review preview for Run Free

  It's heartwarming, well constructed, affirming and inspiring.

  A group of kids from the ghettos of Kingston undertake a Hero Journey, progressing through adversity to triumph with an international production of their own show.
• 
  Maiden (2018)

  Review preview for Maiden

  Alex Holmes' documentary is brilliant.

  The incredible, against-all-odds story of sailor Tracy Edwards, who skippered the first all-female international crew in the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race.
• 
  Unicorn Store (2017)

  Review preview for Unicorn Store

  There will be someone, many, out there who will love it.

  A unicorn-obsessed woman meets a salesman who claims he can supply her with one of her own if she fulfils a series of chores.
• 
  Jujuba (2018)

  Review preview for Jujuba

  The tale it tells is told well enough, but this is a film that has paid close attention to process.

  The shiny red skin of the jujube brings back vague memories of the director's stepmother, recreated on expired film.
• 
  Liminality And Communitas (2018)

  Review preview for Liminality And Communitas

  Laura Rantanen's film is sparse, even spare - a sense of space defined by human endeavours at various scales.

  After sundown, a man walks the motorway verges, gathering roadkill. An investigation of the border between life and death, and the edges of the manmade world.
• 
  Mum's Cards (2018)

  Review preview for Mum's Cards

  An anthropological honesty and something that is a catalogue of intimacies.

  The filmmaker's mother, a sociologist, used index cards throughout her career to make notes on all that she read. Now that she no longer has an office her house is filled with these cards.
• 
  In The Fall (2018)

  Review preview for In The Fall

  A stunning film.

  Faced with the ageing of his faithful workhorse, a man is forced to confront his own mortality and consider a sacrifice to ensure his family's survival.
• 
  We Are All Here (2019)

  Review preview for We Are All Here

  Between interviews and archive footage and Lumo's/Mohsen's/Calum's own words there's a lot to draw from here.

  Glasgow rapper Lumo committed suicide aged 21, sending shockwaves through the Scottish hip hop community. As family and friends struggle to make sense of his death, they uncover hidden clues in lyrics and videos he left behind.
• 
  Hair Wolf (2018)

  Review preview for Hair Wolf

  Something truly delightful.

  In a black hair salon in gentrifying Brooklyn, the local residents fend off a strange new monster: white women intent on sucking the lifeblood from black culture.
• 
  Glassmount (2019)

  Review preview for Glassmount

  Gorgeous imagery is at once sense and senseless, transporting and troubling, riddle and rhythm.

  A triptych of documentary images play simultaneously, united by the same geographical space but offering both complementary and contradictory narrative clues as to what is really going on.
• 
  Gloria Bell (2018)

  Review preview for Gloria Bell

  At heart (and it has a big one) there's a lot going for Gloria Bell.

  A free-spirited woman in her fifties looks for love in LA dance clubs.
• 
  Enough (2019)

  Review preview for Enough

  Enough is a glorious bit of short filmmaking.

  A fuzzy yarn about what happens when patience runs out.
• 
  Terror Nullius (2018)

  Review preview for Terror Nullius

  This is guerilla filmmaking, joyful, angry, triumphant.

  A political revenge fable which offers an un-writing of Australian national mythology.
• 
  The Lady From 406 (2017)

  Review preview for The Lady From 406

  There's a moment where this might be epistolary horror.

  A woman tries to stop smoke from leaking into her home.
• 
  Catcalls (2017)

  Review preview for Catcalls

  Shows an absolute grasp of genre features and a willingness to have fun with them.

  A man picks the wrong stranger to expose himself to.
• 
  Goodnight (2018)

  Review preview for Goodnight

  The unease really builds with the wallpaper of the title screen, the scratching out of its name indicative in a way that will bear fruit later.

  After a young couple puts their daughter to sleep, a paranoid mother starts to believe something else is in her daughter's room.
• 
  Blood Runs Down (2018)

  Review preview for Blood Runs Down

  Zandashé Brown's film is taut, as thin and finely balanced as the tain of pre-Liebig mirrors.

  When a woman undergoes a frightening transition, her vigilant five year old daughter must decide between saving her or protecting herself.
• 
  Eat Pretty (2018)

  Review preview for Eat Pretty

  Rebecca Culverhouse's film is somewhere in a the realm of tableaux vivants, of stereogrammatic .gif sets, of brief moments somewhere around the repeated rustle that Vine left.

  An experimental horror short that explores the link between social media, isolation and eating disorders.
• 
  Cerulia (2017)

  Review preview for Cerulia

  There are intersections of scale and scope - a chair in the greenhouse, what lies hidden beneath the leaves - moments of delight as simple as heterochromatic twins and complex geographies of houses sold and unsold.

  Cerulia returns to her childhood home to find that it is haunted by her memories.
• 
  Proud Mary (2018)

  Review preview for Proud Mary

  Less a knowing subversion of genre than a loving homage to it.

  A hit woman working for an organised crime family in Boston finds her life turned around by a boy whose path she crosses when a hit goes bad.
• 
  Connect (2018)

  Review preview for Connect

  There are things that ring very true in Connect - the way in which a family, particularly father and son, don't talk.

  A young man contemplates suicide after losing someone close to him. He never feels that it’s possible to share his feelings until a care home owner Jeff becomes a source of support and a flirtation with a single mother presents a reason to choose life.