Reviews by Jane Fae

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Plurality (2021)

  Review preview for Plurality

  Looks good and there are moments of real tension.

  After a bus accident, Ming Ze awakens from a coma to discover that his mind now shares the consciousness of four fellow passengers – all of them dead and all serial killing suspects – and sets out to prove his own innocence.
• 
  Plus One (2019)

  Review preview for Plus One

  Not bad, not brilliant.

  In order to survive a summer of wedding fever, long-time single friends Ben and Alice agree to be each other's plus one at every wedding they’re invited to.
• 
  President Blaník (2018)

  Review preview for President Blaník

  The narrative is patchy and uneven.

  Czech political satire.
• 
  The Press & the People, Part I (2022)

  Review preview for The Press & the People, Part I

  The mood, as you would expect, is sombre, serious. The message clear.

  The stories of people who faced press abuse after losing someone close to them.
• 
  Pulse (2017)

  Review preview for Pulse

  Perhaps there are certain questions that we don't need asked; or if they are to be asked, a certain care in the way they are asked would be helpful.

  After a series of humiliations, a young disabled man looking for love decides to transition – but not in the manner you’d expect. Set in an alternative present in which medical procedures are drastically different, the question of what it means to change gender is complicated by the question of what it means to find love when you have a disabled body in an ableist world.
• 
  Les Prostituées De Lyon Parlent (1975)

  Review preview for Les Prostituées De Lyon Parlent

  While it is clearly supportive of the occupation, the film avoids wider political analysis; it is, finally, about women speaking about their lives.

  A fly on the wall documentary about sex workers protesting police inaction over a series of murders.
• 
  The Reagan Show (2017)

  Review preview for The Reagan Show

  It's more an assortment of clips showing Reagan doing what Reagan did best, which was to project a sort of all-pervasive bonhomie through the camera lens.

  A documentary constructed entirely from clips of archive footage, exploring Ronald Reagan's media persona.
• 
  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

  Review preview for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

  Like so many recent sci-fi/fantasy films, Rogue One both follows what came before, and delivers a much darker take on events.

  Rebels set out to steal the plans for the Empire's deadly Death Star.
• 
  Roxanne (2016)

  Review preview for Roxanne

  This is a film of contrasts.

  A transgender sex worker takes an abandoned young girl under her wing.
• 
  Ready Player One (2018)

  Review preview for Ready Player One

  So much to like. Where this film falls down is in not moving beyond the standard quest envelope.

  When the creator of a virtual reality world called the OASIS dies, he releases a video in which he challenges all OASIS users to find his Easter Egg, which will give the finder his fortune.
• 
  Reboot Camp (2020)

  Review preview for Reboot Camp

  As pastiche, it catches some of the pompousness, ludicrousness that exists within the documentary format.

  A pair of brothers start a fake self-help group and plan to make a documentary to expose the manipulations of some self-help set-ups... only for it to take on a life of its own.
• 
  Red Rage (2019)

  Review preview for Red Rage

  There are whiffs of genius here, though mostly in the parts and the small details, rather than the big picture.

  A murderous vigilante couple tear through the city, serving vengeance to dealers of a new designer drug called Red Devil.
• 
  Ride The Eagle (2021)

  Review preview for Ride The Eagle

  A great way to while away 90 minutes.

  Leif is left with a conditional inheritance when his estranged mother dies. Before he can move into her picturesque Yosemite cabin, he has to complete her elaborate, and sometimes dubious, to-do list.
• 
  River (2021)

  Review preview for River

  It drags and is held together only by the fact that there is a super-irritating electronic score playing incessantly in the background.

  Following her mother’s death, River Allen finds herself spiralling out of control, when her friend steps in to help, River discovers she has secrets of her own.
• 
  Robin Hood The Rebellion (2018)

  Review preview for Robin Hood The Rebellion

  This is low budget medieval grunge. The outlaw camp consists of half a dozen sheets hung from trees in the middle of a wood: the Sheriff's castle is an obvious ruin.

  With his true love captured by the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham, the legendary Robin Hood and his crew of outlaws execute a daring rescue to save her.
• 
  The Rookies (2019)

  Review preview for The Rookies

  Like a mosquito that has od'd on psychedelics, the film buzzes its way to a predictable, but nonetheless explosive, climax.

  An extreme sports fan is drawn into a secret crime fighting organisation.
• 
  Rubikon (2022)

  Review preview for Rubikon

  If you like this sort of thing, you’ll like this.

  Following a catastrophe on Earth, the planet is covered in a toxic fog. The crew in the space station, must decide whether to risk their lives to get home and search for survivors, or stay safe in the station's algae symbiosis system.
• 
  A Silent Voice (2016)

  Review preview for A Silent Voice

  Alternately, funny, engaging, witty and insightful, it cuts to the core of teenage cruelty.

  When a former bully is bullied himself, he grows up determined to make amends to the hearing impaired girl he used to pick on.
• 
  Spectre (2015)

  Review preview for Spectre

  The ultimate catch is that Spectre is no longer the villainous outsider. Their badness is corporate: its core, global surveillance and information technology.

  A message from Bond's past sends him on the trail of a sinister organisation.
• 
  Sgt Stubby: An Unlikely Hero (2018)

  Review preview for Sgt Stubby: An Unlikely Hero

  The film ceases to be history or documentary and starts to topple into the realms of propaganda.

  A dog embarks on a wartime adventure.
• 
  Siberia (2018)

  Review preview for Siberia

  About the only element this film shares with John Wick is Reeves' determination to play his part with near zero emotional inflection.

  When an American diamond trader's Russian partner goes missing, he journeys to Siberia in search of him but instead begins a love affair.
• 
  The Silent Hour (2024)

  Review preview for The Silent Hour

  The film soundtrack contributes neatly to the sense of alienation; of setting apart from the hearing world, with background track alternating conventional melody with something far more ominous.

  A detective with hearing loss and a Deaf witness to a murder must lean on each other to outsmart killers they can't hear coming when cornered in an abandoned apartment block.
• 
  Silver Slipper (2019)

  Review preview for Silver Slipper

  A story that could at so many points have engaged and involved the audience seems to take place entirely behind a plate glass screen of teenage boredom.

  Over the course of the summer after her graduation, a young woman decides to auction off her virginity on a website.
• 
  Sing To Me Sylvie (2021)

  Review preview for Sing To Me Sylvie

  The style is very much fly on the wall. Except, I could not imagine any documentary maker hanging around for hours and hours of this stuff. Let alone any self-respecting fly.

  Ten years after a failed music career a woman runs into her former bandmate and offers him a place to stay while her husband is away, forcing them to confront their past.
• 
  Sisters With Transistors (2020)

  Review preview for Sisters With Transistors

  Stops you in your tracks and makes you look at things you thought you knew about through fresh eyes.

  The story of electronic music's unsung heroines.
• 
  The Social Ones (2019)

  Review preview for The Social Ones

  Thanks to a great ensemble cast...it gets away with delivering lines of utter absurdity with a deadpan seriousness that in lesser hands would fall flat.

  Mockumentary about the lives and anxieties of a group of social media “influencers”.
• 
  SpeakOut (2018)

  Review preview for SpeakOut

  SpeakOut, released 28 July 2018 at Norwich Pride, is a useful resource.

  An exploration of the experiences of young lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and questioning people coming out in the care system.
• 
  Spy Intervention (2020)

  Review preview for Spy Intervention

  There is a kernel of a good idea here.

  When the world's greatest spy meets the woman of his dreams, he abandons his adventurous existence and settles into the security of suburbia.
• 
  Start With Half (2019)

  Review preview for Start With Half

  A good idea, well executed.

  An ailing conservative widower and his queer grandchild are brought together by a marijuana muffin.
• 
  The Street (2019)

  Review preview for The Street

  Because it is filmed over time and because it is the result of so many conversations, it has depth.

  Documentary charting the gentrification of a street in London's Hoxton, where locals face being priced out.
• 
  Stuck (2017)

  Review preview for Stuck

  In many ways it feels more like a succession of power music videos, with almost every one memorable and worth a replay.

  A musical about six strangers who get stuck on a New York City subway together and change each others lives in unexpected ways.
• 
  Submerge (2013)

  Review preview for Submerge

  It is, overall, pretty vanilla both in content and presentation.

  An swimming student seduces her tutor.
• 
  Suzume (2022)

  Review preview for Suzume

  For lovers of anime, there are Easter eggs aplenty, including more than a few nods to the famed Ghibli studios.

  Animated adventure sees a teenager fight to close a series of "Doors of Disaster".
• 
  Suicide Kale (2015)

  Review preview for Suicide Kale

  A film about people with whom I have very little in common drew me in and made me laugh.

  A young lesbian couple discover an anonymous suicide note.
• 
  These Final Hours (2013)

  Review preview for These Final Hours

  A compelling, interesting and well-acted redemption tale.

  The world is about to end and a young man is heading to one last party when he encounters a young girl searching for her father.
• 
  Tokyo Fiancée (2014)

  Review preview for Tokyo Fiancée

  Director Stefan Liberski catches both mood and place very well.

  A young Japanophile Belgian woman in Tokyo falls into a whirlwind romance with a Francophile Japanese student.
• 
  Tarrac (2022)

  Review preview for Tarrac

  It engages from the very beginning, filling the screen with real, flawed, down-to-earth characters.

  When a woman goes back home to help her dad after he has a heart attack, she finds her passion for traditional Naomhóg rowing rekindled.
• 
  Team Marco (2019)

  Review preview for Team Marco

  Thumbs up to director Julio Vincent Gambuto for capturing one aspect of Italianicity abroad in New York.

  Young Marco is obsessed with playing video games and hardly leaves the house. But when his grandfather moves in, Marco’s life is turned upside-down and he’s forced...to go play outside. Nonno introduces him to bocce, leading Marco to round up a team of his own.
• 
  Tehran Taboo (2017)

  Review preview for Tehran Taboo

  The society it depicts is one in which ordinary people – and especially women – are crushed beneath the joint burdens of a medieval moral code, and an unfeeling bureaucratic enforcement process.

  An insight into the society of underground Tehran.
• 
  There Are No Saints (2022)

  Review preview for There Are No Saints

  It does pretty much as it says on the wrapper: and if some of us do not have the stomach to stay the course, that is on us, not the filmmakers.

  When a man who was wrongfully imprisoned discovers his wife has been murdered and his son kidnapped, he hatches a plan for vengeance.
• 
  Things We Dare Not Do (2020)

  Review preview for Things We Dare Not Do

  This is a beautiful story that takes you beneath the skin of a culture and a place very different from what us Brits are used to.

  A profile of a Mexican trans teenager on the cusp of adulthood.
• 
  This Game's Called Murder (2021)

  Review preview for This Game's Called Murder

  It feels like writer/director Adam Sherman had fun making this film.

  A family saga focused on shoes and homicide.
• 
  Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

  Review preview for Thor: Ragnarok

  This really is the funniest, campest mainstream superhero film I can remember since the Adam West incarnation of Batman.

  Imprisoned, Thor finds himself in a lethal gladiatorial contest against the Hulk, his former ally.
• 
  Tigers (2014)

  Review preview for Tigers

  There is no flab in the telling of this story, nor any excess sentiment either.

  Devastated when he discovers the effects of the infant formula he's peddling, a young salesman takes on a multinational corporation.
• 
  The Tomorrow War (2021)

  Review preview for The Tomorrow War

  A more than creditable effort by director Chris McKay and writer Zach Dean.

  Time travellers arrive with a warning about the future and to recruit people from the present to join the fight. A schoolteacher signs up.
• 
  Transfinite (2019)

  Review preview for Transfinite

  There is a unity of style and approach that means even though you are watching many films, you still end up with a sense of watching just the one.

  An anthology film in which supernatural trans and queer people from various cultures use their powers to protect, love, teach, fight and thrive.
• 
  The Tunnel To Summer, The Exit Of Goodbyes (2022)

  Review preview for The Tunnel To Summer, The Exit Of Goodbyes

  A beautifully drawn anime featuring teenage love, angst and manga.

  Kaoru Tono heard a rumour: The laws of space and time mean nothing to the Urashima Tunnel. If you find it, walk through and you'll find your heart's desire on the other side...in exchange for years of your own life
• 
  Twist (2021)

  Review preview for Twist

  Engage with it on its own terms, treat it as what it is, which is light, frothy and fun and it is a perfectly acceptable 90 minutes of entertainment.

  A gifted graffiti artist tries to find his way after the loss of his mother.
• 
  Under Milk Wood (2015)

  Review preview for Under Milk Wood

  Kevin Allen succeeds, brilliantly, in creating something new, fresh and thoroughly engaging.

  Dylan Thomas' tale of a Welsh seaside town.
• 
  Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets (2017)

  Review preview for Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets

  A film that from its outset immerses you totally in the world of city Alpha, as well as the humans and aliens that throng its crowded streets.

  Two special operatives go on a mission to Alpha, where species from across the galaxy meet to share knowledge, and where an evil force is gathering its strength.