Craig William Macneil has produced a conflicted feature in Lizzie. There’s passion on screen in the form of the film’s star and producer Chloë Sevigny, whose devotion to the project has spanned almost a decade, but only in flights of brief delirium does the script match her. Although the production is strong, and soundscape marvellous, it’s hard not to feel like you are watching a scabrous melodrama repackaged for arthouse audiences. For all its qualities, Marshall’s is a film strapped by the corset of period drama biography.
With little fanfare, and certainly no warning, Roma draws you in, lulls you, charms you and thoroughly destroys you. This is the first Spanish-language film by Alfonso Cuarón since 2001 and is without question the most personal the Mexican director has ever made. A stunning recreation of Cuarón own childhood, Roma is quietly mesmerising and profoundly affecting.
Unexpectedly, this latest Spider-feature – the hero’s first to be animated – has taken up the mantle of legacy and epitaph. Released in the same year the creative world lost both Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Into the Spider-Verse celebrates the friendly neighbourhood character their collaboration gave birth to back in 1962 and does so in style. The best Spider-Man film since 2004? You bet.
The Film Blog 