Reviews by Andrew Robertson

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Deep Red (2012)

  Review preview for Deep Red

  It is in places red, but it is nowhere deep.

  An experimental exploration of colour.
• 
  Defoe (2009)

  Review preview for Defoe

  Visually it's a delight, but spectacle is not enough.

  Sci-fi short about a shipwrecked traveller, a strange desolate land and a fateful clash with the locals.
• 
  Desert Runners (2013)

  Review preview for Desert Runners

  Jennifer Steinman has achieved something special.

  Fancy racing 250km on foot? Across a desert? Four times?
• 
  Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame (2010)

  Review preview for Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame

  Sammo Hung provides the action sequences, there are model shots and good old fashioned matte painting and the costumes - oh, my, the costumes.

  When spontaneous combustion claims the lives of several members of her court, an empress calls on the brilliant and inventive Detective Dee to solve the mystery.
• 
  De Luce 1: Vegetare (2009)

  Review preview for De Luce 1: Vegetare

  Hand-processed super8 film makes patterns, colours, shapes that raise questions about technique, origin, which remain unanswered.

  Super 8/digital hybrid experimental film, exploring use of colour.
• 
  Directed By Tweedie (2014)

  Review preview for Directed By Tweedie

  Affectionate, engaging, and a great indicator of talent.

  The filmmaker's grandfather learns about films by making one.
• 
  A Distant Echo (2016)

  Review preview for A Distant Echo

  This is cinema that is not necessarily safe.

  The vast expanse of various Californian deserts provide a stage for the contemplative re-enactment of an Egyptian history.
• 
  Dollface (2013)

  Review preview for Dollface

  There's a good amount of self-awareness within the film, and well-portrayed self-realisation for the characters.

  Visiting her boyfriend's apartment for the irs time, a young woman encounters his collection of dolls.
• 
  Double Date (2017)

  Review preview for Double Date

  You'll laugh, and wince, and laugh again.

  An innocent out to prove his manhood meets a pair of femmes fatales.
• 
  Doughnuts (2013)

  Review preview for Doughnuts

  This is an excellent film.

  A marriage comes under strain due a pregnancy and the presence of a rival - a shiny new BMW.
• 
  Down The Road (2007)

  Review preview for Down The Road

  A frantic, classic piece, with a sting in the tail.

  A dark thriller about a vicar who picks up a hitchhiker.
• 
  Dragon (2011)

  Review preview for Dragon

  This is dark, and sweet, and repeatedly inventive, but doesn't always feel coherent.

  A qi expert detective is suspicious when a seemingly ordinary paper maker fights off notorious bandits.
• 
  Drag Me To Hell (2009)

  Review preview for Drag Me To Hell

  Manages to include a whole stack of annoying cliches, stereotypes and habits that it could well do without.

  A bank clerk having a bad day crosses an old gypsy woman and is afflicted with terrible curse.
• 
  Dropping Off Michael (2014)

  Review preview for Dropping Off Michael

  We're given enough to guess, and it's more powerful for it.

  Michael attempts to enjoy his last night of freedom, but his uncle is up to something.
• 
  The Duke Of Burgundy (2014)

  Review preview for The Duke Of Burgundy

  The Duke Of Burgundy is delicate, constructed, poised; a piece of naturalistic beauty with all the authentic artificiality of wings pinioned while drying by small pieces of paper, a needle through the heart that wrenches.

  The relationship of a couple in a sado-masochistic relationship comes under strain.
• 
  Dust (2010)

  Review preview for Dust

  This is an alternate reality, let us say, but a convincing one.

  The unexpected predicament of Apollo 18 astronaut Glen Gordon.
• 
  Ears, Nose And Throat (2016)

  Review preview for Ears, Nose And Throat

  There is a minimalism to this that compels.

  A woman unburdens herself about a horrific event she witnessed.
• 
  Earth (2007)

  Review preview for Earth

  There's simply too much going on; however, it is beautiful, and almost every sequence leaves a desire for more.

  The planet Earth, as seen through four stories about migration.
• 
  Easy Money (2010)

  Review preview for Easy Money

  This is at once a densely interlocking slice of Scandi-crime, an intense set of character pieces, and a poly-lingual indictment of a variety of shades of greed.

  A poor student with an expensive elite lifestyle sells cocaine to pay for his extravagant habits.
• 
  Ebb And Flow (2012)

  Review preview for Ebb And Flow

  An affecting piece of film-making.

  A documentary about a car dealer who is HIV positive and deaf.
• 
  Echo (2012)

  Review preview for Echo

  It's the silences that really give Echo its power.

  A woman makes desperate phone calls and solicits help, but what is she really up to?
• 
  The Eagleman Stag (2010)

  Review preview for The Eagleman Stag

  A looping delight of metaphysicality and biology.

  If you repeat the word 'fly' for long enough it sounds like you are saying 'life'. This is of no help to Peter. His answers lie in the brain of the beetle.
• 
  Earwig (2021)

  Review preview for Earwig

  Earwig invites you to listen, to put out feelers, to scurry.

  Somewhere in Europe, mid-20th century. Albert is employed to look after Mia, a girl with teeth of ice. Mia never leaves their apartment, where the shutters are always closed. The telephone rings regularly and the Master enquires after Mia’s wellbeing. Until the day Albert is instructed that he must prepare the child to leave...
• 
  Easier With Practice (2009)

  Review preview for Easier With Practice

  The film deserves praise for its maturity around sexuality.

  An unpublished author embarks on an unusual relationship after receiving a seemingly random phone call.
• 
  Easter Eggs (2010)

  Review preview for Easter Eggs

  Not without drama, not without charm, this is a touching little piece of rebellion and acceptance.

  A mother and her children enjoy a spectacular Easter celebration in the shadow of Communism.
• 
  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.
• 
  Echo (2008)

  Review preview for Echo

  This is apparently a student film, written and directed by Magnus von Horn, but the 'apparently' is because this is so polished and poised that it seems almost impossible that this is a debut work.

  Two boys are forced to face up to their crime.
• 
  Eileen (2023)

  Review preview for Eileen

  There are so many shots through things, boundaries, borders, thresholds, that we are primed for other barriers crossed. Those transgressions are not light ones, but in them is an abject honesty.

  Set during a bitter 1964 Massachusetts winter, young secretary Eileen becomes enchanted by the glamorous new counsellor at the prison where she works. Their budding friendship takes a twisted turn when Rebecca reveals a dark secret — throwing Eileen onto a sinister path.
• 
  The Elemental (2009)

  Review preview for The Elemental

  Neither particularly original nor particularly satisfying.

  An elderly couple are starving in a condemned tenement, trapped by their terror of a creature on the stair.
• 
  Elemental (2023)

  Review preview for Elemental

  It's got too many things going on and in the process it goes wrong.

  Elemental creatures made of fire, water, earth or air share a city.
• 
  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.
• 
  The End Of Oak Street (2026)

  Review preview for The End Of Oak Street

  When the rubber meets the road of The End Of Oak Street it doesn't quite grip

  The Platt family bands together to navigate new surroundings after a cosmic event transports a suburban neighborhood to someplace unknown.
• 
  Enough (2019)

  Review preview for Enough

  Enough is a glorious bit of short filmmaking.

  A fuzzy yarn about what happens when patience runs out.
• 
  En Rang Par Deux (2020)

  Review preview for En Rang Par Deux

  There is a rhythm to this, a catchy sense of improvisation.

  Animation sees Afif, originally from Tunisia and Aliou, from Senegal, tell their different stories.
• 
  Epic Tails (2022)

  Review preview for Epic Tails

  There's some action, excitement, lashings of snot and vomit, and excellent examples of problem-solving through teamwork and self-belief.

  A young, adventurous mouse and the cat she adopted unwittingly help Jason and the Argonauts to protect their city from the wrath of Poseidon.
• 
  Erratum 2037 (2017)

  Review preview for Erratum 2037

  Half as long as Tenet and at least four times as fun.

  After a high school student accidentally intercepts a message from the future, he is kidnapped and sent into the future where he has to stop the mad plans of an evil genius.
• 
  Eternals (2021)

  Review preview for Eternals

  This is almost an hour longer than anything else Zhao has directed, and while her eye is keen there must surely have been a point where someone looked at a script and thought 'this is too much'.

  The saga of a race of immortal beings.
• 
  Europa (2021)

  Review preview for Europa

  Europa is unrelenting, claustrophobic in the camera's closeness to Kamal.

  Kamal, an Iraqi man trying to enter Europe on foot through the border between Turkey and Bulgaria, is relentlessly pursued through a forest by a group of hunters.
• 
  Europa (2021)

  Review preview for Europa

  Jose Lillo's performance as Pedro is of chiselled weariness, whisper, mutter, movement.

  A foreign worker in Switzerland has to take a cow to slaughter while his mother is dying in a Spanish hospital.
• 
  Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga (2020)

  Review preview for Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga

  There's a very clear fondness here for the subject matter.

  When aspiring musicians Lars and Sigrit are given the opportunity to represent their country at the world's biggest song competition, they finally have a chance to prove that any dream worth having is a dream worth fighting for.
• 
  Evening (2007)

  Review preview for Evening

  Evening has all the advantages one might hope for. It's a shame, then, that it doesn't quite fulfill its potential.

  A dying woman recounts her past romances to her daughters, who are struggling with their own love lives.
• 
  Everything Everywhere All At Once (2021)

  Review preview for Everything Everywhere All At Once

  Everything Everywhere All At Once is bravura, high concept, unhinged and beautifully crafted.

  A science fiction action adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman who can't seem to finish her taxes.
• 
  Ever Here I Be (2010)

  Review preview for Ever Here I Be

  It's the script and the visuals that really sing.

  An exploration of the feelings of an impending break-up.
• 
  The Expend4bles (2023)

  Review preview for The Expend4bles

  Tired, bloated, crude, stumbling, and showing its age, Expendables as a franchise is perhaps a reflection of some of its cast.

  Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on, the Expendables are the world's last line of defence and the team that gets called when all other options are off the table.
• 
  Expensive Shit (2020)

  Review preview for Expensive Shit

  In a festival selection that included a number of feminist works and perspectives this was a standout.

  A Nigerian toilet attendant, desperate for survival, forced to manipulate unsuspecting women for men watching from behind a two-way mirror in a Glasgow club.
• 
  The Eyes Of Orson Welles (2018)

  Review preview for The Eyes Of Orson Welles

  Drink in the imposition of expressionism through ergonomics, gaze up, craning at shots considered anew.

  A journey through the pictorial world of Orson Welles, his drawings, paintings and works of youth, seen for the first time on screen thanks to his daughter Beatrice Welles.
• 
  Eldest Brother (2014)

  Review preview for Eldest Brother

  A gentle ethnographic survey.

  Documentary about the Tzotsil community in Chiapas.
• 
  Electric Light Wonderland (2009)

  Review preview for Electric Light Wonderland

  Shot in ultra-closeup on occasion, confined, claustrophobic.

  Three men unpack a mobile discotheque, quietly musing on what is to come.
• 
  Emergency Calls (2013)

  Review preview for Emergency Calls

  Powerful stuff.

  An abstracted story based on real life calls to the emergency services.
• 
  Enraged Pigs (2012)

  Review preview for Enraged Pigs

  Perfectly contained, the contrast between human concerns and a cultural expression that's at once alien and untranslateable and immediately recognisable is stunning.

  The women of a small village wake up one day to discover that their husbands have turned into raging pigs.