Reviews by Rebecca Naughten

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Hamada (2018)

  Review preview for Hamada

  Despite desolate circumstances and habitat, Domínguez Serén's film buzzes with humour and human warmth.

  Portrait of a group of young Sahrawi friends who live in a refugee camp in the Sahara.
• 
  Mataharis (2007)

  Review preview for Mataharis

  A through-line in the work of writer-director Icíar Bollaín is her interest in representing a variety of female experience, in both private and professional spaces.

  Three female detectives find a series of cases combine with personal upheavals to give them new perspectives on their own lives as well as those of their clients.
• 
  Rapture (1979)

  Review preview for Rapture

  The film achieves a state of grace through the performances and chemistry of the actors.

  Sliding into a heroin-induced oblivion, a director and his actress girlfriend become entangled with an aspiring filmmaker, whose addiction to cinema proves equally dangerous.
• 
  On Football (2015)

  Review preview for On Football

  Makes adroit use of the Beautiful Game's resonance in people's lives as a route in to a personal story.

  An estranged father and son reunite after 20 years in order to watch the 2014 World Cup together.
• 
  No Cow On The Ice (2015)

  Review preview for No Cow On The Ice

  A thoughtful and personal meditation on language, identity and landscape.

  Documentary following a young Galician filmmaker when he emigrates to Sweden. As he learns about Swedish culture, society and lifestyle, he develops a new identity.
• 
  Don't Include Me Among You (2015)

  Review preview for Don't Include Me Among You

  Sánchez's patience and openminded approach to someone who resisted conformity has enabled him to create a gentle portrait.

  Documentary about an elderly man admitted to a care home who strives to maintain his independence.
• 
  Ixcanul (2015)

  Review preview for Ixcanul

  A sensitively handled female coming-of-age tale.

  Story of a teenage girl living in the foothills of a volcano, who faces an arranged marriage but is won over by the charms of a plantation worker.
• 
  Embrace Of The Serpent (2015)

  Review preview for Embrace Of The Serpent

  Structurally illustrates how the indigenous people don't see time as being a chronological straight line but as multiple realities existing simultaneously.

  The story of the relationship between an Amazonian shaman and two scientists who, decades apart, search the Amazon for a sacred healing plant.
• 
  Refuge England (1959)

  Review preview for Refuge England

  Refuge England is a film made by someone with empathy for the man onscreen and genuine insight into the experience of leaving your home through necessity rather than choice.

  The film records the experiences of a Hungarian refugee arriving in London with no English, little money and with his only prospect of help an incomplete address written on a postcard.
• 
  Revue (2008)

  Review preview for Revue

  Loznitsa does not impose his opinions onto the material in an obvious fashion.

  Based on archive propaganda newsreels produced in the USSR in the 1950s and 60s.
• 
  Nightcleaners (1975)

  Review preview for Nightcleaners

  The Berwick Street Collective did not set out to make a by-the-numbers film and instead crafted a documentary that is experimental in form, and that strives to get at deeper truths about gender and labour inequalities.

  A documentary about the campaign to unionise underpaid and victimised women who clean office blocks at night.
• 
  Utopias (1989)

  Review preview for Utopias

  To watch Utopias in 2016 is to experience a sense of déjà vu - it shows the NHS and whole concept of the welfare state under attack while the Labour Party flounders through factionalism and an inability to articulate a vision of the future.

  A series of individuals explain what socialism means to them.
• 
  A Dream From The Bath (1988)

  Review preview for A Dream From The Bath

  A thought-provoking 22 minutes.

  Response to the 1985 Films Act.
• 
  Words For Battle (1941)

  Review preview for Words For Battle

  The film lacks the lively spark and sense of nationwide collectivism of Jennings' subsequent film, Listen to Britain.

  Poetry and excerpts considering conflict.
• 
  Listen To Britain (1942)

  Review preview for Listen To Britain

  A poetic evocation of Britain under pressure.

  A symphony of sounds in a day in the life of Britain during wartime.
• 
  The Silent Village (1943)

  Review preview for The Silent Village

  The film suggests that the story ignites a sense of working class solidarity.

  The true story of the massacre of a small Czech village by the Nazis is retold as if it happened in Wales.
• 
  Spare Time (1939)

  Review preview for Spare Time

  Jennings had an eye for small moments that signal real life rather than something staged for the camera

  A look at how industry workers spend their off-hours.
• 
  Eastern Valley (1937)

  Review preview for Eastern Valley

  Arguably the film is a slight affair in comparison to some other contemporaneous works, although perhaps some of the shortcomings seen by modern eyes are an unavoidable part of filmmaking in that era.

  Documentary detailing the establishment of a co-operative society by unemployed miners in Wales.
• 
  Land Of Promise (1946)

  Review preview for Land Of Promise

  Paul Rotha's film is impressively rounded and researched in how it considers multiple perspectives and interrelating elements of infrastructure, economy and commerce.

  An impassioned post-war call for nationally co-ordinated action to solve the housing crisis that had blighted lives for decades.
• 
  Housing Problems (1935)

  Review preview for Housing Problems

  The film is one of the first examples of vox populi and the presentation of ordinary people talking directly to the camera was innovative for the era.

  A British documentary movement film drawing attention to the living conditions in the slums of 1930s Britain.
• 
  Today We Live (1937)

  Review preview for Today We Live

  The film takes a compassionate stance towards the unemployed.

  Documentary entwining stories from the Rhondda Valley and rural Gloucestershire, showing communities trying to make constructive attempts to improve themselves.
• 
  The Walker (2015)

  Review preview for The Walker

  There is a fairytale vibe to proceedings, enhanced by the snow through which he trudges in the parks.

  Mateo is a civil engineer who plans to walk every street in New York to create a different kind of map of the city.
• 
  Dead Slow Ahead (2015)

  Review preview for Dead Slow Ahead

  The disjuncture between sound and image where humans are concerned is suggestive of the workers being integrated into - or becoming interchangeable with - the workings of the ship.

  Essay film mixing documentary and more abstract explorations onboard a freight ship.
• 
  Black (2015)

  Review preview for Black

  This energetic film has a lot to recommend it, not least the way music is juxtaposed with action.

  A Romeo and Juliet-style tale of love between members of rival street gangs and immigrant communities in contemporary Belgium.
• 
  Hand Gestures (2015)

  Review preview for Hand Gestures

  A small gem of a film and one worth seeking out.

  Documentary charts the work within a Milanese bronze sculpture factory.
• 
  Land Of Mine (2015)

  Review preview for Land Of Mine

  The randomness of death in times of war aside, Land Of Mine - perhaps unavoidably - leans towards the conventional in its overall narrative arc.

  In the aftermath of World War Two, the Allies used German prisoners of war to defuse and clear landmines from the Danish coastline.
• 
  The Fallen Idol (1948)

  Review preview for The Fallen Idol

  The Fallen Idol is overshadowed by Reed and Greene's The Third Man but is in many ways a precursor for the later film, not least in visual terms.

  A butler working in a foreign embassy falls under suspicion when his wife falls to her death and the only witness is a child.
• 
  Crimson Peak (2015)

  Review preview for Crimson Peak

  An opulent gothic romance in the vein of Jane Eyre or Rebecca rather than a by-the-numbers horror film.

  Gothic romance in which a young American woman becomes ensnared by the machinations of a pair of British siblings.
• 
  Neither God Nor Santa Maria (2015)

  Review preview for Neither God Nor Santa Maria

  The scratchy texture of the film lends an ethereal quality to the images almost as if the passing sea frets and attendant mist have soaked into the very fabric of the film.

  Old audio recordings of pastors discussing the mythical existence of witches and their travels play over the images of the daily life of an elderly woman.
• 
  Becoming Anita Ekberg (2014)

  Review preview for Becoming Anita Ekberg

  A fascinating and humorous exploration of a star image and its use by savvier directors.

  An exploration of how the construct of “Anita Ekberg” became an internationally famous sex goddess.
• 
  Night Without Distance (2015)

  Review preview for Night Without Distance

  This is a film of silences and pauses, hushed conversations and isolated contemplation.

  An instant in the memory of landscape - the smuggling that for centuries crossed the line between Portugal and Galicia.
• 
  Ulterior (2014)

  Review preview for Ulterior

  Not for the squeamish, the short essay film effectively represents the life cycle in reverse.

  A film essay about death and life and our bodies in those states.
• 
  In The Distance (2015)

  Review preview for In The Distance

  Quietly affecting.

  It’s calm and peaceful above the clouds. But in the distance is war, and night by night chaos advances.
• 
  The Happiest Days Of Your Life (1950)

  Review preview for The Happiest Days Of Your Life

  As you would expect with actors of this calibre, there are some delightful sequences where the two leads display their acute comic timing by playing off each other.

  A mix-up at the Ministry sees a respectable girls' school evacuated to the all-male Nutbourne College, much to the horror of their respective headteachers.
• 
  Abdul & Hamza (2015)

  Review preview for Abdul & Hamza

  Well worth seeking out.

  Two Somali immigrants hide near the Serbia-Romania border. Trailed by two sound designers, and armed with a GPS, they are planning their escape.
• 
  Archipelagos, Naked Granites (2014)

  Review preview for Archipelagos, Naked Granites

  Hérétakis has an eye for the details of street life and in chronicling the exuberance and angst of a generation who don't see why they should accept the world as it is.

  Athens 2014. The daily life of a country in crisis, the inertia of revolution, the individual issues that confront the political, questions of survival that confront ideals.
• 
  Limbo (2014)

  Review preview for Limbo

  Confidently slow burning and comfortable with moving at its own speed.

  A connection grows between a teenager and a newly arrived teacher.
• 
  No Man's Land (2012)

  Review preview for No Man's Land

  Lamas highlights the power of the much-maligned 'talking head' format of documentary while simultaneously striking out into less clearly defined territory aided by the shadowy life story of that same man.

  A former mercenary confesses to the brutal acts for which he is responsible.
• 
  Salam Cinema (1995)

  Review preview for Salam Cinema

  You can't help but feel that Simon Cowell may have seen this film - it's the audition stages of The X Factor, avant la lettre.

  Five thousand hopeful actors turn out for an audition unaware that the film is about hopeful actors auditioning.
• 
  Vampir-Cuadecuc (1971)

  Review preview for Vampir-Cuadecuc

  Portabella's repurposing and reimagining of the elements at Franco's disposal creates something genuinely (and appropriately) otherworldly.

  Avant-garde documentary that uses behind-the-scenes material from Jess Franco's Count Dracula film to reconfigure the Dracula story into an otherworldly tale.
• 
  A Spell Of Fever (2015)

  Review preview for A Spell Of Fever

  Safia Benhaim has constructed a haunting film.

  One feverish night a girl encounters the spirit of a woman returning to Morocco from lengthy political exile.
• 
  Closed Curtain (2013)

  Review preview for Closed Curtain

  The more problematic aspects of the film stem from a narrative that cannot sustain the inventiveness of the central conceit and which peters out before the end.

  A writer and his dog retreat to a coastal villa only to have their peace disturbed by two siblings fleeing the police.
• 
  Li'l Quinquin (2014)

  Review preview for Li'l Quinquin

  Dumont - for all the outlandishness of the film in other aspects - prioritises a messy realism over straightforward likeability in relation to his protagonists.

  A blackly comic murder mystery develops in a small town in northern France.
• 
  Macario (1960)

  Review preview for Macario

  The film feels surprisingly modern but never anachronistically so.

  A peasant is befriended by 'Death' and given a water that can heal any disease... but his new powers attract unwanted attention.
• 
  The First Film (2015)

  Review preview for The First Film

  A clear passion project that could nonetheless do with some judicious editing to tighten its focus.

  A filmmaker's three-deccade quest to priove that the world's film industry started in Leeds.
• 
  María Candelaria (1944)

  Review preview for María Candelaria

  There are several standout compositions among Figueroa's cinematography.

  A young woman faces prejudice because her mother was a prostitute.
• 
  Redeemer (2014)

  Review preview for Redeemer

  Overall, fans of the genre will probably enjoy the fight sequences but the story and characterisation do not stand up to closer inspection.

  An ex-hitman turns vigilante to seek redemption for his sins by taking on a vicious drug cartel and facing deadly assassin "The Scorpion".
• 
  Prophet's Prey (2014)

  Review preview for Prophet's Prey

  A fascinating but deeply disturbing film.

  A look at the mega- lomaniacal leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
• 
  A Separate Wind (2014)

  Review preview for A Separate Wind

  Newcomers Cobos and Buzzurro both acquit themselves admirably given that they effectively have to carry the film with no prior experience.

  A young brother and sister have to trek across Mexico after their mum suffers a stroke.
• 
  All Of Me (2014)

  Review preview for All Of Me

  González Villaseñor has given these women a voice of their own and constructed a merited tribute to their determined generosity.

  Every day since 1995, a determined group of women have been using all their resources to feed hundreds of migrants passing through La Patrona, a small village in Central Mexico.