Category: Documentary

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Orwell: 2+2=5

Director – Raoul Peck – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 119m

****1/2

A primer on the life and work of George Orwell, particularly Nineteen Eighty-Four, and its relevance to today’s post-truth world – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 27th

This belongs to the school of documentary which creates a film out of assembling fragments of movies, found footage, archive clips and images, moving or still. The list of feature films and other source material used in this instance is astonishing, with the director given full access to the Orwell Estate. Peck also makes use of clips from various movie adaptations of Nineteen Eighty-Four (Paul Nickell, 1953; Rudolph Cartier, 1954; Michael Anderson, 1956, Michael Radford, 1984) plus Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985), a film so heavily inspired by Orwell’s book that it was originally entitled 1984½, and Animal Farm (John Halas, Joy Batchelor, cartoon animated feature, 1954; John Stephenson, Jim Henson Creature Shop, 1999; illustrations by Ralph Steadman, 1995). On top of this, he uses BBC Drama The Crystal Spirit: Orwell on Jura (John Glenister, script: Alan Plater, 1983) and Orwell’s essay Why I Write (1946).

These last two are particularly pertinent, given that Peck has chosen to focus on the final year (1949-50) of Orwell’s life during which he took himself off to the Island of Jura, Scotland to finish writing Nineteen Eighty-Four and was subsequently admitted to University College Hospital, London with Tuberculosis.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Underland

Director – Rob Petit – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 12a – 79m

***

Three separate journeys beneath the Earth’s surface in the company of an archaeologist, a particle physicist and an urban explorer – had its sold out UK Premiere at the Barbican on Tuesday, March 24th and is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 27th

Why do we seek the void, asks a narrator (Sandra Hüller from Project Hail Mary, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, 2026; The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer, 2023; Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet, 2023) as the camera descends into an Academy 4:3 image of an orifice within an ash tree, a portal to the world below. In a letterboxed image, we’re in a car passing the garish lists of Las Vegas entertainments, then on to breach a wire fence on the outskirts of that city. Then with a group of women cavers in a jungle, possibly South America somewhere, near a tree on the edge of a vast hole in the ground. Another group of cavers stand around in a room in readiness. A further caver walks down an urban street and starts to lift a manhole cover.

In terms of following what’s going on, apart from the idea of people in different places possessed of a desire to penetrate the Earth’s surface, and exciting, pulsating music by Hannah Peel, all this is really hard to follow; the viewer’s brain is overloaded.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Broken English

Directors – Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 96m

*****

Musician and cultural icon Marianne Faithfull is interviewed at length, and her life and artistic achievements examined from several angles – compelling documentary is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, March 20th

Who is Marianne Faithfull? Given that, sadly, she died during the making of this documentary about her, we should ask another question. Who was Marianne Faithfull? 

Marianne appears extensively here as a real life, a 78-year-old interviewed by actor George MacKay (from The Beast, Bertrand Bonello, 2023; Femme, Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping, 2023; 1917, Sam Mendes, 2019) for The Ministry of Not Forgetting, an institution created specially for this film narrative where it is run by Tilda Swinton (from Memoria, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021; Snowpiercer, Bong Joon Ho, 2013; Orlando, Sally Potter, 1992) in a suit and tie who delivers all manner of fascinating pronouncements about Marianne’s life and work, and at one point even explores that territory by choreographing a dancer’s movements.

While The Ministry of Not Forgetting provides a structure within which Faithfull’s humanity and legacy can be explored, this latest film from Forsyth and Pollard (20, 000 Days on Earth, 2014; The Extraordinary Miss Flower, 2024) is characteristically kaleidoscopic.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen
Turner & Constable

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2026 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

****

A journey through the current Tate Britain show and art history about the two rival landscape painters – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, March 10th

This latest Exhibition on Screen entry kicks off in uncharacteristic fashion with photographic shots of landscape (typical of views that used by painters Turner and Constable) accompanied by an excerpt from the poem Richmond by James Thomson (1834-1882), a favourite of both painters whose work will be similarly deployed (voiced by Robert Lindsay) at appropriate intervals throughout this documentary.

Amy Concannon © David Bickerstaff

However, the film soon moves into more familiar territory with shots of present day London and of the Tate Britain’s current Turner & Constable exhibition, with visitors admiring some of the paintings on display. Amy Concannon, Manton Senior Curator, Historic British Art, Tate Britain, notes that this show represents the first time the two painters have been displays side by side on such a vast scale. Turner & Constable were born within a year of one another, which became a catalyst for the current show’s displaying them together.

Lachlan Goudie © David Bickerstaff

Artist, writer and broadcaster Lachlan Goudie talks about the “dazzling” influence of both artists on the likes of Delacroix.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

It’s Never Over,
Jeff Buckley

Director – Amy Berg – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 106m

***1/2

A look at the life of the hugely talented singer / songwriter whose career in the 1990s was cut short by his untimely death – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 13th

It’s tempting to place Jeff Buckley among the all too long list of rock and roll music casualties who killed themselves via a mixture of excessive lifestyle and drug abuse, a list which includes Jeff’s absent, singer / songwriter father Tim, who died of a morphine and heroin overdose at age 28.

This documentary charts its subject’s life chronologically and thus doesn’t get to the issue of Jeff’s death until late on. Following his early years as a young hopeful living in New York City, Jeff Buckley relocated to Memphis where one day, aged 30, he swam out into the Wolf River (a tributary of the Mississippi) and was never seen alive again. The autopsy, which was pretty much open and shut, recorded that he had one beer in his system. Nothing else. The river at this location had a powerful undertow, so Buckley’s untimely death can be put down to a tragic combination of ignorance and misjudgement.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

What Should We
Have Done?
(Do Sureba Yokatta Ka?,
どうすればよかったか？)

Director – Fujino Tomoaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. N/C 15+ – 102m

***1/2

Remarkable diary film of the director’s sister who has undiagnosed schizophrenia as his parents deprive her of a decent quality of life for 30 years – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2026 which runs from Friday, 6th February to Tuesday, 31st March

Darkness. The sound of a woman angrily, relentlessly, berating her daughter. At least, that’s what it sounds like. Director Fujino Tomoaki clarifies. He’s not trying to explain how his sister got schizophrenia, nor what schizophrenia is.

His elder sister was smarter than him. She spent four years trying to get into Medical School. One night in 1983, at home, she went completely berserk, waking everybody up. She was taken to a psychiatric hospital, who found nothing wrong with her. Tomoaki just doesn’t believe it. Another night at 2am she walked into his room, sobbing. He became worried that if she had another episode, he’d have to fight back, and the consequences might destroy his life. After his father, a medical research academic like his mother, disagreed with a psychiatrist’s thesis as to what was wrong with her, he got a job that enabled him to leave home and escape.… Read the rest

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Animation Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music Shorts Top Ten

Top Ten Movies
(and more,
excluding re-releases)
2025

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2025, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course.

All numbered films received either a theatrical, online or home media release in the UK between 01/01/25 and 31/12/25.

This version excludes re-releases (Battleship Potemkin, The Piano Teacher or Hard Boiled, among others) would top everything here). In addition to re-releases, this version also excludes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any other UK release in 2025. For that even longer list, click here.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten Movies (and more) 2025

Please click on titles to see reviews.

The numbering will mostly be added later when I’ve watched more of the outstanding 2024 titles, and they have stopped moving around. So, currently, positions in this list should be taken with a pinch of salt.

*****

1=. Flow (2024, Belgium, France, Latvia)

1=. The Glassworker (2024, Pakistan, Spain)

1=. One Battle After Another (2025, US)

1=. Riefenstahl (2024, Germany)

1=. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024, Iran, Germany, France)

6=. Mars Express (2023, France)

6=. On Swift Horses (2024, US)

6=. … Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music Shorts Top Ten

Top Ten Movies
(and more)
2025

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2025, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course.

All numbered films received either a theatrical, online or home media release in the UK between 01/01/25 and 31/12/25.

This version includes re-releases, but those aren’t numbered. It’s hard to imagine movies improving on Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, Haneke’s The Piano Teacher or Woo’s Hard Boiled.

In addition to re-releases, this version also includes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any wider UK release in 2025.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten Movies (and more) 2025

Please click on titles to see reviews.

The numbering will mostly be added later when I’ve watched more of the outstanding 2024 titles, and they have stopped moving around. So, currently, positions in this list should be taken with a pinch of salt.

*****

Babe (1995, Australia – reissue)

Battleship Potemkin / Music by Pet Shop Boys (1925, USSR – reissue, new score)

Brief Encounter (1945, UK – reissue; also in Film Tottenham’s BFI / Love & Obsession programme)

A Clockwork Orange (1971, US, UK – in Film Tottenham’s Cinema for All / 100 Years of Community Cinema programme)

The Devil’s Backbone (2001, Mexico, Spain – reissue)

Dogtooth (2009, Greece – reissue)

1=. … Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Tale of Silyan
(Приказната за Силјан)

Director – Tamara Kotseva – 2025 – North Macedonia – Cert. 12a – 81m

*****

A farmer, whose livelihood has collapsed thanks to economics and government policy, cares for a stork with a broken wing – in cinemas from Friday, December 12th

This begins with a simple voiceover story. Silyan, ostracised from the other storks because he was different, is noticed by a similarly lonely father who takes pity on the stork and invites it to live with him.

Then it swiftly switches to two parallel narratives within the same geographical area.

In one, a man’s extended family builds a new storey onto their house for the son and daughter in law. The act of building is very much a family affair, with even the man’s small granddaughter mucking in.

In the other, a flock of storks build their nests on the roof of an old farmhouse building nearby.

The man is a farmer (Nikola Conev); his extended family help him pick this year’s harvest of vegetables, then accompany him to a string of local farmer’s markets to sell his produce. At this point, the man hits a problem; the going rate has dropped. And he can’t get a decent price for his produce.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Dark Star

Director – John Carpenter – 1974 – US – Cert. PG – 83m (71m Directors Cut)

*****

Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star

Director – Daniel Griffith – 2010 – US – 118 mins

*****

A bored crew of astronauts travel through space blowing up unstable planets – out now as a 4K Ultra-HD and Blu-ray Box Set, and a standalone Blu-ray

Carpenter’s 71-minute cut of his extraordinary debut feature is a lean, if tacky, sci-fi comedy that succeeds because of clever characterisations in the script and exemplary use of minimal resources in its production. Begun as a student film at USC, it preceeds his more polished, widescreen thriller efforts of the 1970s starting with Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and Halloween (1978) with their relentless, pounding scores which he also composed and which would enable him to reinvent himself as a performing musician much later in his career. With no driving beat, Dark Star’s keyboard tones merely hint at what is to come musically.

The spaceship interiors are deceptively simple. One is a small room with four seats crammed side to side alternately facing from which four crew members operate the ship. Or, rather, three – Lt.… Read the rest