Reviews by Jane Fae

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Citizen Jane: Battle For The City (2016)

  Review preview for Citizen Jane: Battle For The City

  This documentary fails to join the dots or link a past that still resonates with a controversial present.

  In the 1960s, writer and activist Jane Jacobs fights against NYC’s most ruthless power broker, Robert Moses, and his draconian urban redevelopment plans.
• 
  The Danish Girl (2015)

  Review preview for The Danish Girl

  In the sense that this is a film produced for a mainstream audience about a subject of which it knows little, it is not bad.

  The story of transgender pioneer Lili Elbe.
• 
  Dating Amber (2020)

  Review preview for Dating Amber

  The comedy dries up from around the middle of the film.

  A pair of gay teenagers fake a relationship to avoid prejudice.
• 
  Days Of Daisy (2022)

  Review preview for Days Of Daisy

  Alongside the gentle humour there is a quirky subversiveness to this film that belies its outward ordinary appearance.

  As her 40th birthday draws near, Daisy feels societal pressure to settle down and start a family. In a spiral for meaning, she teams up with local photographer Jack Palmer to give West High School students the art programme that they deserve.
• 
  Divos! (2020)

  Review preview for Divos!

  An all-round fun film to watch.

  Teenage egos collide when a self-proclaimed "Broadway Legend in the Making" is forced to share the spotlight with the school's star athlete in the high school musical.
• 
  Donna (2022)

  Review preview for Donna

  The Compton story is an important one, highlighting how queer liberation did not happen just the once in one single location. For me, however, far more interesting was her personal story.

  An intimate and candid portrait of trans activist, artist and performer Donna Personna, which follows her journey to live authentically as herself and to reconnect with her family.
• 
  Downeast (2021)

  Review preview for Downeast

  After a slow start, this is a film that draws you in.

  A story of love, loss, and redemption in the seedy underbelly of Maine.
• 
  Duck Daze (2019)

  Review preview for Duck Daze

  This is a community that, one suspects, director Alison Piper understands well.

  Johnina gets revenge on her childhood abuser and the community that enabled him, with the help of a duck.
• 
  Destination Unknown (2017)

  Review preview for Destination Unknown

  Destination Unknown asks a subtly different question from most films that went before. Which is, how did those who came through that time survive? Even, have they truly survived?

  Dcoumentary, featuring the testimony of Holocaust survivors.
• 
  Eating Our Way To Extinction (2021)

  Review preview for Eating Our Way To Extinction

  If you are already tuned into the issues, you will likely nod along in agreement with almost every sentence uttered in the polished Winslet tones.

  The threat to the planet generated by our eating habits.
• 
  End Of Sentence (2019)

  Review preview for End Of Sentence

  All praise to the acting here, as each star deliver characters with depth and meaning, without the encumbrance of lengthy self-exposition.

  A widower embarks on a journey to fulfil his wife's wish to have her ashes scattered in Ireland, taking his estranged son along for the trip.
• 
  Evil Come, Evil Go (1972)

  Review preview for Evil Come, Evil Go

  Not a film i'd recommend to anybody, unless late night, at a party, with a large bowl of popcorn and an audience prepared to laugh at it, not with it.

  A religious fanatic murders people who are engaging in sex and enjoying it.
• Extinction (2019)

  Review preview for Extinction

  It is funny, sharp, and like the best of the short film genre – all creds to director Jack Cooper Stimpson - pretty much every second works towards sketching a neat, clear picture of the issues with minimal lines.

  A political satire about climate change. Focused on the protest group Extinction Rebellion.
• 
  The Fable (2019)

  Review preview for The Fable

  The film builds neatly, slowly to a serious turning point just past the half way mark. After that....you're on your own!

  A darkly comic portrait of an assassin who works for the yakuza.
• 
  Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (2016)

  Review preview for Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

  There is meat and crunch and intelligent plotline.

  The year is 1926 and Newt Scamander has just completed a global excursion to find and document an extraordinary array of magical creatures when things go awry in New York.
• 
  Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald (2018)

  Review preview for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald

  Grand chases and massive effects.

  In an effort to thwart Grindelwald's plans of raising pure-blood wizards to rule over all non-magical beings, Albus Dumbledore enlists his former student Newt Scamander, who agrees to help, unaware of the dangers that lie ahead.
• 
  Fifty Shades Of Grey (2015)

  Review preview for Fifty Shades Of Grey

  Fifty Shades is romcom without much com: an old-fashioned soft porn flick designed to appeal to women “of a certain age” (and younger).

  A student's life is irrevocably changed when she meets a tormented billionaire.
• 
  The Fight (2020)

  Review preview for The Fight

  An eye-opener of a documentary.

  Inside the ACLU, a team of scrappy lawyers battle Trump’s historic assault on civil liberties.
• 
  Flashback (2021)

  Review preview for Flashback

  Flashback seems designed to allow multiple simultaneous interpretations.

  After encountering a man from his past, a young man attempts to piece together his fragmented recollections about taking an experimental drug called Mercury, which could be connected to a girl's disappearance.
• 
  Fortress: Sniper's Eye (2022)

  Review preview for Fortress: Sniper's Eye

  Did I care? Not really. There was a certain homogeneity amongst both villains and saints.

  The story of a top-secret resort for retired US intelligence officers.
• 
  For Love Or Money (2019)

  Review preview for For Love Or Money

  After an opening that fans of the genre will recognise from time honoured tradition, it takes an abrupt turn to the left and...after that, nothing is the same.

  A fairy tale romance takes an unexpected turn when Mark discovers his beautiful bride-to-be, Connie, has actually been plotting against him.
• 
  Four Kids And It (2020)

  Review preview for Four Kids And It

  It adds useful continuity to the psammead canon.

  Adaptation of the children's classic.
• 
  French Tech (2020)

  Review preview for French Tech

  This is satire. Sharp, observant, but unlike British films in similar vein, never cutting.

  An unemployed man has two months while his wife is away to prove he can take care of the kids and find a job.
• 
  Freshman Year (2020)

  Review preview for Freshman Year

  There is some slight humorous incident and dialogue.

  A lonely college freshman forges a strong connection with his resident assistant during a fraternity party.
• 
  Fifty Shades Darker (2017)

  Review preview for Fifty Shades Darker

  Fifty Shades is rapidly becoming a modern erotic version of Dallas.

  Christian and Ana decide to rekindle their relationship, except this time there are no more rules or punishments.
• 
  Final Recall (2017)

  Review preview for Final Recall

  About two-thirds in, the film turns aside from the well-travelled predictable path and becomes something else entirely.

  Five friends go to stay at a remote lake house in ignorance of the fact that planet Earth is facing an alien invasion and mass-abduction.
• 
  Folkbildningsterror (2014)

  Review preview for Folkbildningsterror

  This film is not afraid to take the piss out of itself. Probably.

  A queer anarchist punk musical about kidnapping a politician and taking him to the zoo.
• 
  Free State Of Jones (2016)

  Review preview for Free State Of Jones

  Not surprising if the actors appear, at times, to be walking woodenly through their words. They are trying, doing their best, but they are overwhelmed by the enormity of the issues they are grappling with.

  A disillusioned Confederate army deserter returns to Mississippi and leads a militia of fellow deserters, runaway slaves, and women in an uprising against the corrupt local Confederate government.
• 
  Generation Utøya (2021)

  Review preview for Generation Utøya

  Generation Utøya is a compelling, fascinating, humbling insight into a massacre.

  Documentary portrait of four young women who survived the terror attack on Utøya in 2011.
• 
  A Girl's Band (2018)

  Review preview for A Girl's Band

  Watching the film I fell in love with at least half a dozen great bands and female performers.

  A former bassist chronicles the stories of female musicians in Argentina, their music and their activism.
• 
  Glue (2019)

  Review preview for Glue

  Uses sharp observation and economy of dialogue to set a scene.

  A woman waits to meet her ex for the first time since their break-up.
• 
  Golden Dawn Girls (2017)

  Review preview for Golden Dawn Girls

  Too much of this fascinating material was subordinated to the question of what to call them, to the point where the director's insistence on that single question started to get in the way.

  A documentary about the women of Greece's Golden Dawn party.
• 
  Goliath (2022)

  Review preview for Goliath

  A crisp, downbeat, clever exploration of the issues, combined with a whodunnit.

  In the aftermath of President Macron's U-turn on a glyphosate ban, the stories of lawyer Patrick, victim France and lobbyist Mathias intertwine when the wife of a farmer dead from cancer commits a terrible act of protest.
• 
  The Green Lie (2018)

  Review preview for The Green Lie

  This is political in a way that is rarely found in documentary.

  Documentary makers explore corporate claims about sustainability.
• 
  Girls Lost (2015)

  Review preview for Girls Lost

  So many questions... challenging us, in one filmic episode, to think long and hard about our definitions and expectations of trans, lesbian and gay.

  A strange plant gives three teenage girls the chance to experience life in male bodies.
• 
  A Good Day to Die, Hoka Hey (2016)

  Review preview for A Good Day to Die, Hoka Hey

  The film maintains the image of a man very little interested in self-reflection.

  The life story of British conflict photographer Jason P Howe.
• 
  The Guys Next Door (2016)

  Review preview for The Guys Next Door

  This is a very happy documentary, telling a very ordinary story of an extraordinary family coping with the addition of a second child.

  A married woman in her 40s, with a husband and three children, is also the surrogate mother for her married gay friends' children.
• 
  Herself (2020)

  Review preview for Herself

  Yes, Herself is first and foremost a film about a woman's journey. It is also, in a smaller way, about another journey, from selfishness to community spirit.

  A domestic abuse survivor tries to build a new life - and home - for her kids.
• 
  The Hummingbird Project (2018)

  Review preview for The Hummingbird Project

  This is a story of building a thing against impossible odds.

  A pair of cousins embark on scheme to make millions in High Frequency Trading.
• 
  Il Mio Corpo (2020)

  Review preview for Il Mio Corpo

  The camerawork is artful.

  Under the Sicilian sunlight, Oscar collects scrap metal with his father. At the other end of town, Stanley the Nigerian migrant gets by thanks to small tasks given by the parish priest. Both share the same desire for a better life.
• 
  Implanted (2021)

  Review preview for Implanted

  It is slick, well-made with a not half decent soundtrack.

  A struggling young woman is implanted with an experimental AI chip. She must fight to survive when it takes control.
• 
  Infamous (2020)

  Review preview for Infamous

  A glossy, upbeat immorality tale of our times.

  Two young lovers rob their way across the southland, posting their exploits to social media, and gaining fame and followers as a result.
• 
  Inside The Rain (2019)

  Review preview for Inside The Rain

  Fisher has not taken the easy route, of creating Ben as pure victim to rage against the evil and conventional.

  College film student Benjamin Glass (played by writer-director Aaron Fisher) has it all: ADHD, OCD, borderline personality. And he’s also bipolar. When a misunderstanding threatens to expel him from college, Glass pushes back.
• 
  In Action (2020)

  Review preview for In Action

  There is no single element here to excuse my visceral dislike of this film.

  When the government intercepts their script, believing it to be a veritable terrorist plot, two screenwriters find themselves in trouble.
• 
  In Bed With Victoria (2016)

  Review preview for In Bed With Victoria

  I like that this film includes a good deal of interesting, amusing gender role reversal

  Comedy about a single mum trying to strike a balance in her life.
• 
  In Broad Daylight (2023)

  Review preview for In Broad Daylight

  Exposé there is, albeit not quite the way you might expect. At its core, however, are some much more interesting questions.

  Posing as the granddaughter of a private extended care home patient, an investigative journalist uncovers a culture of abuse and corruption at the facility.
• In The Strange Pursuit Of Laura Durand (2019)

  Review preview for In The Strange Pursuit Of Laura Durand

  There is a tension between two worlds here.

  A pair of bandmates, obsessed with a porn star from the Nineties, find themselves on an unexpected journey round Greece.
• 
  I Am Rage (2023)

  Review preview for I Am Rage

  It’s a predictable revenge action movie but it brings to the genre a degree of wit and self-awareness.

  An ancient cult embroiled in a sinister blood trade makes the deadly mistake of abducting a young woman with a violent, shocking past.
• 
  I Got Life! (2017)

  Review preview for I Got Life!

  This is a film from the perspective of women: and not just one perspective, but many, which is what gives it its richness.

  A woman embraces a new phase in her life.
• 
  In This Corner Of The World (2016)

  Review preview for In This Corner Of The World

  Stay with it, allow it to draw you in and in the end you will have your reward.

  Animated story of a young woman, set against the backdrop of Second World War Hiroshima.