Reviews by Richard Mowe

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  Queen At Sea (2026)

  Review preview for Queen At Sea

  Lance Hammer’s drama confronts its subject unsentimentally head on with no holds barred.

  As advanced dementia erodes an older woman’s ability to communicate her inner life, her husband and daughter struggle to act in her best interests, navigating love and the fragile boundaries between care, protection and autonomy.
• 
  De Gaulle: Part 2 - Liberté (2026)

  Review preview for De Gaulle: Part 2 - Liberté

  A follow-on that more than rivals its predecessor.

  Second part of the biopic following Charles De Gaulle's life between 1940 and 1945.
• 
  Pretty Babies (2026)

  Review preview for Pretty Babies

  The performances of Lind and Stanley capture the close intimacy of female friendship and support with an easy chemistry

  Two young girls flee their hometown drawn by the seductive promise of the Hollywood but their American Dream soon fractures.
• 
  Borges And Me (2026)

  Review preview for Borges And Me

  Offers a wealth of engaging detail

  In the early 1970s writer and student Jay Parini finds himself committed to driving blind poet Jorge Luis Borges across the Scottish countryside. The pair form a bond over the journey.
• 
  Skintown (2026)

  Review preview for Skintown

  The film accurately portrays a generation in the crossfire which hasn’t been seen before.

  During the 1994 IRA ceasefire, two best friends try to escape their lives in a small Irish town.
• 
  Sea Of Glass (2026)

  Review preview for Sea Of Glass

  Each set-piece revelation is sprung like a physical blow to the solar plexus.

  After experiencing immense family turmoil in the wake of her husband’s death, a woman seeks solace in a quiet seaside town. There, she forms an unexpected bond with a young woman.
• 
  Black Money For White Nights (2026)

  Review preview for Black Money For White Nights

  The directors with their fifth feature take a humane view of the plight of their subjects but spare us any over-sentimentality

  After years of saving money from the small bribes they collect, 60-year-old Marina and her husband Gosha from Bulgaria are preparing for their dream trip to St Petersburg to witness the White Nights. But when Russia invades Ukraine and the travel agency vanishes with all their savings, the couple’s dream collapses.
• 
  The Guest (2026)

  Review preview for The Guest

  A fascinating and mature ensemble piece

  New parents Karl and Emilie are looking forward to a weekend break where they plan to announce their baby's name. The day before the celebration, Karl's estranged mother shows up.
• 
  A Happy Family (2026)

  Review preview for A Happy Family

  Successfully mixes genres rather purely being a social drama

  A mother finds her life turned upside down after a fire leads to her children being put in foster care and becomes determined to track them down.
• 
  Chica Checa (2026)

  Review preview for Chica Checa

  A testament to tolerance, forgiveness and the ability of the characters to overcome differences.

  A postwoman tries to fulfil the last wish of her ailing mother.
• 
  Crescendo (2026)

  Review preview for Crescendo

  Crescendo has a buoyant sense of fun

  Satire sees the cast of an opera rocked by an accusation of sexual assault.
• 
  De Gaulle: Résistance (2026)

  Review preview for De Gaulle: Résistance

  Baudry excels in the well-orchestrated battle sequences and the huge protesting crowds surrounding the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

  The story of Charles de Gaulle's rise to power.
• 
  The Stranger (2025)

  Review preview for The Stranger

  Ozon remains faithful to the source and keeps its sense of mystery but has strengthened the female characters

  Adaptation of Camus' classic.
• 
  Misper (2025)

  Review preview for Misper

  Filmed with a dark sense of brooding.

  A staff member at a seaside hotel vanishes without a trace.
• 
  On The Sea (2025)

  Review preview for On The Sea

  Finds its strength in the subtlety of the writing and the power of the understated performances.

  A love story about a married mussel farmer who falls in love with a handsome newcomer.
• 
  Islands (2025)

  Review preview for Islands

  The actors...own their characters with considerable skill which helps to paper over any deficiencies in the script

  Tom, a tennis coach at a luxury hotel, has his life changed when a new family arrives. Matters take a dark turn when the husband disappears and both Tom and the wife become suspects.
• 
  Christy (2025)

  Review preview for Christy

  Touching, compelling and full of humanity.

  Two estranged brothers with chequered childhoods in the care system suddenly find themselves living under the same roof.
• 
  Dragonfly (2025)

  Review preview for Dragonfly

  The performances of double Oscar-nominated Blethyn and Riseborough provide hypnotic accounts of their characters as two vulnerable souls on the edge.

  When Colleen volunteers to care for her elderly neighbor Elsie, the two quickly bond. But beneath the pleasantries, motives start to be questioned leading to a devastating series of events.
• 
  Out Of Love (2025)

  Review preview for Out Of Love

  Ambrosioni extracts lived-in performances from Cottin and the whole cast which lifts what could have been a straight-forward drama into a profound and moving portrait of families and motherhood.

  After many years, Suzanne and her two children unexpectedly show up at the home of her sister Jeanne. It initially looks like Suzanne is tentatively attempting to re-establish a relationship with her sister. But this illusion is shattered with the morning light: Suzanne is gone and Jeanne is forced to become a mother to children she barely knows.
• 
  Rebuilding (2025)

  Review preview for Rebuilding

  It could not be more apposite in exploring how whose who have lost everything in such environmental disasters, find resilience in human connections.

  After a wildfire takes the family farm, a rancher seeks a way forward.
• 
  Sirât (2025)

  Review preview for Sirât

  The film looks amazing, but it sounds even more incredible.

  A father arrives at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco with his son, looking for his daughter who has been missing for months.
• 
  Leave One Day (2025)

  Review preview for Leave One Day

  The narrative bowls along from one set piece-chanson to another.

  Cécile is about to open her own gourmet restaurant, finally making her dream come true, when suddenly her father has a heart attack and she is called back to the village where she was born... and runs into her teenage crush.
• 
  Enzo (2025)

  Review preview for Enzo

  Yet Pohu’s performance sums up all the conflicted feelings, desires and anxieties of someone at the crossroads of entering adulthood.

  A 16-year-old boy breaks out from his bourgeois family and starts an apprenticeship as a stonemason. He also meets a Ukrainian colleague who turns his world upside down.
• 
  A Magnificent Life (2025)

  Review preview for A Magnificent Life

  The screenplay is packed with absorbing detail.

  Animated consideration of the life of the cinema pioneer.
• 
  The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

  Review preview for The Phoenician Scheme

  The real challenge is to keep up with the pace as well as the information overload.

  The story of a family and a family business.
• 
  Nouvelle Vague (2025)

  Review preview for Nouvelle Vague

  Guillaume Marbeck as Godard is pitch perfect, trademark dark glasses and tobacco smoke his indispensable props with even the voice uncannily resonant of the man himself.

  This is the story of Godard making Breathless, told in the style and spirit in which Godard made Breathless.
• 
  Die, My Love (2025)

  Review preview for Die, My Love

  Ramsay's style takes no prisoners.

  A woman battles her demons.
• 
  The Great Arch (2025)

  Review preview for The Great Arch

  An absorbing account.

  1982. French President François Mitterrand decides to launch an international architectural competition for the flagship project of his mandate: the Great Arch of La Défense, aligned with the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. Against all odds, Otto von Spreckelsen, a Danish architect, wins the competition...
• 
  Bono: Stories Of Surrender (2025)

  Review preview for Bono: Stories Of Surrender

  The amount of material is impressive.

  A vivid reimagining of Bono’s critically acclaimed one-man stage show, Stories of Surrender: An Evening of Words, Music and Some Mischief…
• 
  Eddington (2025)

  Review preview for Eddington

  The truly admirable aspect of Eddington is the way Aster constantly pulls the rug from under expectations.

  A stand-off between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbour is pitted against neighbour in Eddington, New Mexico.
• 
  Dalloway (2025)

  Review preview for Dalloway

  The creepy big brother aspect of the film pervades everything.

  Clarissa, a writer lacking inspiration, joins a prestigious artist residency at the cutting edge of technology. There, she finds support - and even a confidante - in Dalloway, her virtual assistant, who helps her write. But Clarissa begins to grow uneasy with the AI’s increasingly intrusive presence.
• 
  Case 137 (2025)

  Review preview for Case 137

  It’s Drucker’s mesmerising performance that papers over the cracks.

  Stéphanie, a police officer working for Internal Affairs, is assigned to a case involving a young man severely wounded during a tense and chaotic demonstration in Paris. While she finds no evidence of illegitimate police violence, the case takes a personal turn when she discovers the victim is from her hometown.
• 
  Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

  Review preview for Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

  It’s certainly all very timely and apposite

  Our lives are the sum of our choices.
• 
  The Most Precious Of Cargoes (2024)

  Review preview for The Most Precious Of Cargoes

  The choice of hand-drawn animation and its ability to demonstrate a magical realism allows the film to find the right distance from what is being depicted.

  Animation about a woodcutter and his wife whose lives are transformed after they rescue a baby thrown from a train that passes near their home.
• 
  Reawakening (2023)

  Review preview for Reawakening

  The narrative deals profoundly with grief as well as loss which will assuredly resonate with most of us.

  Tension mounts for a couple when a woman claiming to be their daughter, who went missing 10 years before, arrives back in their lives.
• 
  Lee (2023)

  Review preview for Lee

  Winslet performance holds a powerful sway, embracing Lee’s abrasive and conflicted personality and viewing the horrors with an analytical eye and a sense of bravado as well as despair.

  The story of photographer Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller, a fashion model who became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue magazine during the Second World War.
• 
  Sing Sing (2023)

  Review preview for Sing Sing

  Using a mix of both professional and amateur actors the film reveals the intimate details and attitudes of these incarcerated individuals

  A theatre group escapes the reality of incarceration through the creativity of staging a play, with a cast that includes actors who have been incarcerated.
• 
  Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

  Review preview for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

  Burton pieces together the components with a demonic rigour that belies its sequel status.

  After a family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia's life is turned upside down when her teenage daughter, Astrid, accidentally opens the portal to the Afterlife.
• 
  A Sudden Glimpse To Deeper Things (2024)

  Review preview for A Sudden Glimpse To Deeper Things

  A fascinating portrait of a woman ahead of her time.

  Consideration of the painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.
• 
  Àma Gloria (2023)

  Review preview for Àma Gloria

  One of the most moving portraits of childhood seen recently on the screen.

  Six-year-old Cléo loves her nanny Gloria more than anything. When Gloria must return to Cape Verde to care for her own children, the two must make the most of their last summer together.
• 
  Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024)

  Review preview for Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

  It has all the hallmarks of a production destined for a television mini-series with apparently three other chapters promised by Costner.

  An epic spanning the Civil War from 1861 to 1865.
• 
  The Shameless (2024)

  Review preview for The Shameless

  Bojanov draws not only a sensitive portrait of the bond between the two women but also exposes the dyn.amics of a deeply conservative and religious society

  Love story between two women who face a struggle against a patriarchal society.
• 
  The Marching Band (2024)

  Review preview for The Marching Band

  The two siblings bond and the disparate threads of their relationship prove immensely touching as they ruminate on the lost years and chances.

  A conductor discovers he was adopted and has a younger sibling.
• 
  This Life Of Mine (2024)

  Review preview for This Life Of Mine

  The character could have proved irksome in less talented hands than Jaoui who invests her character with self-deprecating humour and a sense of resilience.

  A woman travels to Scotland in a bid to reinvigorate her life.
• 
  Rumours (2024)

  Review preview for Rumours

  The writing is sharp and succinct.

  World leaders become stranded in the woods during a G7 summit.
• 
  Dog On Trial (2024)

  Review preview for Dog On Trial

  Dosch uses the true story to make wider observations about the often fraught relationships between humans and animals.

  A young lawyer tries to save a dog from capital punishment.
• 
  Emilia Perez (2024)

  Review preview for Emilia Perez

  Audiard has assembled a remarkable team of actors

  A lawyer gets an offer to help a cartel boss start a new life.
• 
  Kinds Of Kindness (2024)

  Review preview for Kinds Of Kindness

  The entire cast, especially Stone, who has admitted that Lanthimos is a muse, enter into the grand guignol spirit of the proceedings with gusto.

  A triptych fable, following a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
• 
  Megalopolis (2024)

  Review preview for Megalopolis

  It is described simply as “A Fable”, but there is nothing simple about this over-ambitious allegorical sprawl.

  Power play and corruption unfold in a futuristic city.
• 
  Bird (2024)

  Review preview for Bird

  Amid all the deprivation Arnold, as is her style, uncovers elements that lift the action out of the ordinary and into the realms of fantasy and magical realism.

  12-year-old Bailey lives with her single dad Bug and brother Hunter in a squat in North Kent. Bug doesn’t have much time for his kids and Bailey who is approaching puberty seeks attention and adventure elsewhere.