Reviews by Andrew Robertson

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Coins (2021)

  Review preview for Coins

  At every interaction the possibility of gleam is replaced with the certainty of grime.

  A neurotic waitress with a phobia of coins fights to control her darkest fears, as her reality falls apart.
• 
  Noir-Soleil (2021)

  Review preview for Noir-Soleil

  From the smallest bit of set and stance comes posture, posterity the goal of this endeavour.

  After an earthquake in Naples bay, the body of a man is found.
• 
  In The Soil (2021)

  Review preview for In The Soil

  It is not just in vision that there is quality.

  Karoline’s life is turned upside down when her father, Kjeld, manically starts digging a pit in their backyard.
• 
  Squish! (2021)

  Review preview for Squish!

  Not just unbalanced tonally, it is consistent with itself. It is a thing to enjoy, to allow to wash over you

  A meditation on the self through lurid and liquid forms; filtered through both old and foreseeable technology informed by Thai animation history and contemporary culture.
• 
  The Nicky Nack (2021)

  Review preview for The Nicky Nack

  Something unco good in mixing the dread and the drouthy.

  A man walking home from his local one night is tormented by a terrifying sound: The Nicky Nack.
• 
  In My Network (2021)

  Review preview for In My Network

  The recursively unreal spaces are an environment produced by external constraints.

  Recalling the endless scrolling of social networks, a camera shifts from space to space, settling on the profiles of various young people.
• 
  Naughty Spot (2021)

  Review preview for Naughty Spot

  This is something inevitably personal.

  ​It's Tonio's first time in Corsica. He wanders across the island and on dating apps until stumbling upon the Oracle, a user who tells him about gay life in Corsica.
• 
  Handbook (2021)

  Review preview for Handbook

  It takes a lot to make this kind of document. The simplest line is often the hardest.

  In the days following the presidential election in Belarus in August 2020, numerous protests erupt throughout the country.
• 
  Love, Dad (2021)

  Review preview for Love, Dad

  This is striking, innovative, affecting.

  An author rediscovers love letters her dad used to write to her from prison. That love seems to be gone now. She decides to write back in hope to find the connection again.
• 
  Sierra (2021)

  Review preview for Sierra

  Sander Joon's film is an absolute delight. There is not a character or element whose design does not feel both fitting and funny.

  A father and his son are losing the folk race. In order to win, the boy turns himself into a car tyre.
• 
  Dad's Sneakers (2021)

  Review preview for Dad's Sneakers

  This is heartbreaking.

  An immersive insight into the last hours of 13-year-old Sasha’s life in a boarding school for children deprived of parental care.
• 
  Podesta Island (2020)

  Review preview for Podesta Island

  Stephanie Roland's film exists in a space between spaces, a liminal latitude, languorous longitude, a tropic of candour.

  In a hyperconnected and mapped world, are there still unknown areas?
• 
  Her Violet Kiss (2021)

  Review preview for Her Violet Kiss

  Though it is constructed about a ruin this is an unburied treasure, not a folly.

  A re-contextualised a scene from a lost silent German title, Liebeshölle.
• 
  Pride (2021)

  Review preview for Pride

  For all its universalities, this is something rooted in the very particular terroir of American further education.

  Set in Charlottesville during the early 1990s, Pride follows an aspiring writer as she finalises stories for the latest issue of Pride, a student run newspaper at the University of Virginia.
• 
  Fireflies (2021)

  Review preview for Fireflies

  Fireflies is abstract, potentially uncomfortable, even intermittently visceral.

  One night, when the city of Rio de Janeiro was asleep, the flora and fauna took over Flamengo's Park.
• 
  There Is Exactly Enough Time (2021)

  Review preview for There Is Exactly Enough Time

  The charm of this piece is bound up in its melancholic energy, a eulogy where many of the lines were drawn by the lost.

  Oskar Salomonowitz, the 12-year-old son of the filmmakers Anja Salomonowitz and Virgil Widrich, had already drawn 206 pictures for a flip book when he died.
• 
  One Hundred Steps (2021)

  Review preview for One Hundred Steps

  There are layers of colonial consequence to these spaces, their gardens dominated by stepped approaches and the borrowed architecture of imagined pasts.

  The eighth audio-visual collaboration of Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca references the work of Bob Quinn, Irish filmmaker.
• 
  A Present Light (2021)

  Review preview for A Present Light

  Jorge Quintela's cinematography finds grandeur in what could be grime.

  On a rainy night, a sad man leaves his home to deliver a letter to someone who recently left him.
• 
  The Timekeepers Of Eternity (2021)

  Review preview for The Timekeepers Of Eternity

  This is intertext, existing in a twilight zone where the benefit of 25 years of distance and the loss of colour gives it the cast of something at least as old again.

  Footage from a forgotten Stephen King mini-series is edited, printed and animated into a hypnotic paper nightmare.
• 
  The Prison In 12 Landscapes (2016)

  Review preview for The Prison In 12 Landscapes

  Everywhere are rules that are absolute unless they aren't.

  A film about the prison from the places we least expect to find it.
• 
  Baby Assassins (2021)

  Review preview for Baby Assassins

  This is a delight. From me it drew outpourings of laughter as sharp and as bright as the splashes of blood from a punctured neck.

  Chisato and Mahilo are two high school girls who are about to graduate. They also happen to both be highly skilled assassins. When the organisation they work for orders them to share a room, the relationship between turns sour.
• 
  X (2022)

  Review preview for X

  This isn't a remake but feels like one.

  In 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make an adult film in rural Texas, but when their reclusive, elderly hosts catch them in the act, the cast find themselves fighting for their lives.
• 
  Carajita (2021)

  Review preview for Carajita

  The actors make grieving palpable, as sure and solid as the colours caught by Ivan Gierasinchuk.

  Sara and her nanny Yarisa have a relationship that seems to transcend their class condition but an accident will test their loyalty.
• 
  Mighty Flash (2021)

  Review preview for Mighty Flash

  An astonishing arrival.

  Docufiction portrait of a community in Spain's Extremadura.
• 
  Hold Your Fire (2021)

  Review preview for Hold Your Fire

  This is a tragedy at any level. There's not just the siege but the associated mentality, a mixture of recursion, remorse, and regret.

  Reconstruction of a 1970s bungled robbery, told from different perspectives.
• 
  Not Going Quietly (2020)

  Review preview for Not Going Quietly

  Nicholas Bruckman's film follows Ady long enough that we see not just the impact upon him but the changes wrought in those around him.

  An intimate, inspiring look at activist and loving father Ady Barkan, diagnosed with ALS at age 32 and who, in spite of declining physical abilities, embarks on a nationwide campaign for healthcare reform.
• 
  Karmalink (2021)

  Review preview for Karmalink

  This film bears strange and delightful fruit without affecting its sweetness, its surprise.

  In a near-future world, a boy and his friend try to untangle the mystery of his past-life dreams.
• 
  La Civil (2021)

  Review preview for La Civil

  This is a considered film, a triumph, there are few like it and more's the pity.

  The story of a mother whose teenage daughter is kidnapped in Northern Mexico. When the authorities offer no support in the search, she takes matters into her own hands and transforms from housewife into a vengeful militant.
• 
  Three Floors (2021)

  Review preview for Three Floors

  The stories might notionally pull together but these feel like a pile of sticks rather than a cohesive nest, a jigsaw that's middling and without edge.

  The story of three families living in three apartments in the same bourgeois condominium.
• 
  Her Way (2021)

  Review preview for Her Way

  It's not an easy watch, but it is a good one.

  Marie worked as a sex work­er for 20 years. To ensure her son’s future, Marie wants to pay for his stud­ies. She needs mon­ey, quickly.
• 
  The Outfit (2022)

  Review preview for The Outfit

  The Outfit isn't doing anything new, but it does it all incredibly well.

  An expert tailor must outwit a dangerous group of mobsters in order to survive a fateful night.
• 
  The Batman (2022)

  Review preview for The Batman

  This feels leaden, not just due to its length, but in the attempt to be heavy, to be worthy.

  When sadistic serial killer the Riddler, begins murdering key political figures in Gotham, Batman is forced to investigate the city's hidden corruption and question his family's involvement.
• 
  The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

  Review preview for The Manchurian Candidate

  A compelling conspiracy thriller, one that still holds a visceral power 60 years after release

  An American PoW in the Korean War is brainwashed as an unwitting assassin for an international Communist conspiracy.
• 
  Clear And Present Danger (1994)

  Review preview for Clear And Present Danger

  There are several kinds of thriller nested here.

  CIA Analyst Jack Ryan is drawn into an illegal war fought by the US government against a Colombian drug cartel.
• 
  Belle (2021)

  Review preview for Belle

  This is a triumph of design.

  The story of a shy teenager who becomes an online sensation as a princess of pop.
• 
  Uncharted (2022)

  Review preview for Uncharted

  Uncharted doesn't break new ground, and doesn't retread familiar territory in a fun way. It's diverting enough, but its crosses and double crosses are all pretty well signposted

  A street-smart young man is recruited by a seasoned treasure hunter to help him recover a fortune amassed by Ferdinand Magellan and lost 500 years ago by the House of Moncada.
• 
  Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)

  Review preview for Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

  Few sources of comedy are left unplumbed.

  A man and his wife decide they can afford to have a house in the country built to their specifications. It's a lot more trouble than they think.
• 
  Parallel Mothers (2021)

  Review preview for Parallel Mothers

  Milena Smit is a relative newcomer. This is only her second feature and she has real presence.

  Two women, a generation apart, find themselves inextricably linked by their brief time together in a maternity ward, bound by a secret with ties to a deep trauma in Spanish history.
• 
  West Side Story (1961)

  Review preview for West Side Story

  It still does things that surprise.

  Musical transposes the story of Romeo and Juliet to the gang-ridden streets of New York.
• 
  The Power Of The Dog (2021)

  Review preview for The Power Of The Dog

  That is the strength of adaptation, to find in the words and the spaces between them new rhythms, new visions.

  A widow and her son are tormented by her new husband’s sullen and bullying brother.
• 
  Nightmare Alley (2021)

  Review preview for Nightmare Alley

  From its first kindlings it draws breath from your lungs as surely and as steadily as it draws your eyes.

  An ambitious carny with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychiatrist who may be even more dangerous than he is.
• 
  The 355 (2022)

  Review preview for The 355

  There is a solid certainty amongst its crosses and doubles and that's that it isn't very good.

  When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, a wild card CIA agent joins forces with three international agents on a lethal mission to retrieve it, while staying a step ahead of a mysterious woman who's tracking their every move.
• 
  The Humans (2021)

  Review preview for The Humans

  As with most everything in the A24 stable it looks amazing, but at root it is just people in rooms, talking. Sometimes talking about their dreams, which is to undersell it.

  Set inside a pre-war duplex in downtown Manhattan, The Humans follows the course of an evening in which the Blake family gathers to celebrate Thanksgiving. As darkness falls outside the crumbling building, mysterious things start to go bump in the night.
• 
  The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

  Review preview for The Matrix Resurrections

  When I finished watching it I was already looking forward to seeing it again, again.

  To find out if his reality is a construct, to truly know himself, Mr. Anderson will have to choose to follow the white rabbit once more.
• 
  Clifford The Big Red Dog (2021)

  Review preview for Clifford The Big Red Dog

  While it's got some quirks it's relatively inoffensive, and if it feels like damning it with faint praise to say it's got nothing drastically wrong with it then fair enough.

  A girl who is struggling to fit in finds a new best friend, but after the pup grows up he attracts the attention of a genetics company, forcing the pair to go on the run.
• 
  West Side Story (2021)

  Review preview for West Side Story

  Songs that had taken place in single locations are given scope to roam, a challenge to all involved but delightful for it.

  Musical sees romance fuel a gang rivalry in New York.
• 
  Boxing Day (2021)

  Review preview for Boxing Day

  There's a lot going on. Possibly too much, but that's ambition.

  A British author comes home for Christmas to introduce his American fiancee to his British-Caribbean family.
• 
  Far From The Tree (2021)

  Review preview for Far From The Tree

  Drawn in a beautiful style that recalls older Disney hand-drawings.

  Curiosity gets the better of a young raccoon whose frustrated parent attempts to keep them both safe.
• 
  The Card Counter (2021)

  Review preview for The Card Counter

  Tightly wrapped doesn't begin to cover it.

  William Tell, a for­mer ser­vice­man who became a pok­er play­er, leads a soli­tary exis­tence on the casi­no trail. His path cross­es with Cirk, a vul­ner­a­ble and angry young man obsessed with his plan for revenge and he tries to steer him away from violence.
• 
  Encanto (2021)

  Review preview for Encanto

  It is breezy, bright, brilliant.

  A young Colombian girl has to face the frustration of being the only member of her family without magical powers.