★★★★
They’re a precocious pair, Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz. Both under forty and each an Oscar winner, the duo reunite after the ebullient La La Land to produce First Man, a more demure, yet still rip roaring, success. An adaptation of James R. Hansen’s Life of Neil Armstrong – by fellow Academy winner Josh Singer no less – the film has the visual mastery of Gravity but adds a welcome familial resonance.
★★★★
Modernism, in the UK at least, has garnered a muddied name, a casualty of the sixties concrete blocks that are so resented by traditionalists. South Korean documentarian and video essayist Kogonada may well change minds in his modestly beautiful feature debut, a romantic study of life in the so-called ‘mecca of modernism’. Influenced by the reflective strains of Japanese cinema, Columbus is softly composed and structured with impressively assured restraint.
★★
Hadi Hajaig defines his style as ‘genre with something else’. In the case of Blue Iguana, that something else is immaturity, sexism and a shed load of unconvincing fake blood. This belongs in that avenue of cinema that considers a splutter of ‘you repulsive testicle’ at the end of a sentence enough to make a joke.
The Film Blog 