★★
Having finally conceded Spider-Man to Disney’s branch of Marvel, Sony have a problem. Their biggest asset is essentially, temporarily, gone and they have no headline act for the not-so-new world of cinematic universes. To their favour, the studio have nine hundred comic book characters to play with in their historic acquisitions and room for world-building expansion. It’s just a shame that Sony’s answer to their big problem is Venom.
Mandy | Review
★★★★
Nicolas Cage and Andrea Riseborough are hardly what you’d call natural screen bedfellows. She’s the rising star with a talent for ethereal nuance; he’s the rampant Yank with innumerable viral videos devoted to his outrageous acting style. Yet, in the sophomore feature of Italian-Canadian filmmaker Panos Cosmatos, they kind of click. Indeed, to dismiss Mandy as the latest Cage rampage feels a tad unfair, even if it does feature an instantly iconic, bathroom-based, mourning scene. To riff on Glenn Close in The Wife, this is much more – visually – interesting than that.
★★★★
There are two types of tower block in the east end of London, architecturally symbolising a polarisation that Mark Gillis proves to be all too aware of in Sink, his feature debut. On one side of the Thames are those sleek, glass bastions of capitalism that make up Canary Wharf; on the other, the concrete block epitomes of sixties social welfare. Naturally – in the tradition of Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz and Ken Loach – the hero of this socially aware, albeit morally ambitious, feature belongs to the latter.
The Film Blog 