Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : Having witnessed a sexual assault, eight-year-old Josephine ( Mason Reeves ) finds herself in the back of a police car with the victim ( Syra McCarthy ) in writer-director Beth de Araújo's troubling drama, ' Josephine '. Still courtesy of Berlinale / Sundance Film Festival Review contains significant plot detail and triggering material However you respond to writer-director Beth de Araújo’s second feature, Josephine – her feature debut, Soft & Quiet , was released under the Blumhouse [horror] banner in 2022 - you are unlikely to forget it. The titular Josephine (Mason Reeves) is an athletic-minded, father-worshipping eight-year-old girl, who witnesses a sexual assault after racing ahead of her Liverpool Football Club-supporting father, Damien (Channing Tatum) in a San Francisco public park. In looking for her, Damien takes a wrong turn – cue early gasps from the audience. Josephine, variously referred to as Jo by Dad or JoJo by her dancer mother, Claire (G...

  Pictured : Accused of intentionally inciting the burning of head scarves at the institution where she teaches, Roya (Turkish actress  Melisa Sözen ) considers whether she should confess in Iranian writer-director Mahnaz Mohammadi 's drama, ' Roya ', screened at the 2026 Berlinale. Still courtesy of Totem Films / PakFilm . Drawn from her experience of incarceration, having fallen foul of the Iranian regime like so many  writers, directors and critical thinkers in recent times, writer-director Mahnaz Mohammadi’s film Roya exerts a firm grip on its audience’s sympathy. For a long stretch, point-of-view camera shots represent ‘guest 2648’, detained teacher, Roya (Turkish actress Melisa Sözen) as she is intentionally disorientated, assaulted, berated and invited to make a confession, that she incited a spate of scarf burning at the institution where she works. We learn that her sister, Samira (Maryam Palizban) has died following complaints to an agent. Unlike Samira, Roya ha...

  When is a horror movie not a horror movie? When it deliberately avoids scaring the audience. Perpetrator , an American film written and directed by Jennifer Reeder set to be released on the subscription channel Shudder, has plenty of blood, implements of torture, disappeared girls, metamorphoses of different types – the shuddering face effect is a clue that something is going on – and a high school, coming-of-age setting (the protagonist’s 18 th birthday has a heightened significance) but for long stretches plays like a knowing riff on the genre. You watch it not with impending dread but with impatience. Reeder isn’t creating and manipulating expectations in the way that other directors do, although we have some suspicions of who the perpetrator is. Rather, with incessant but barely commented upon nose bleeds – at least two characters resemble Jack Nicholson’s JJ Gittes post-knife wound look in Chinatown – it reproduces horror tropes without the thrill, including that stock pos...

  Estiu 1993 ( Summer 1993) absolutely bowled me over (that’s English for ‘I really, really liked it’). It is the debut feature of Spanish-born, London Film School-trained writer-director Carla Simón, whose previous credits include the 2013 short film, Lipstick . Simón based the film on her childhood. When Simón was aged six, her mother died. She was taken to live with her aunt, uncle and cousin. The film isn’t exactly autobiographical but has emotional truth. It is a terrific film about adjustment and repressed emotion, a reminder that, as children, we don’t know how to express what we feel because we don’t know how to process something. How can you grieve when you are not sure what you have really lost? Simón’s six-year old alter ego is Frida (Laia Artigas, terrific) who we first see in a game of freeze tag. A boy attempts to frighten her into movement but she is stock still. ‘Why are not crying?’ he hisses. At home, her aunt Marga (Bruna Cusi) and uncle Esteve (David Verdagu...

  Pictured : Cristina (Marion Cotillard), the seemingly aloof 'Snow Queen' featured in co-writer-director  Lucile Hadžihalilović 's film, ' La Tour de Glace ' (' The Ice Tower '). Still courtesy of Goodfellas (France)   Director Lucile Hadžihalilović’s French language fourth feature, La Tour de Glace ( The Ice Tower ) is a film about reflective surfaces. Emotionally distanced, with spare use of dialogue, it tells the story of an orphaned young teenager, Jeanne (Clara Pacini) who becomes obsessed with a movie star, Cristina (Marion Cotillard) cast as the Snow Queen in an adaptation of a Hans Christian Anderson story. Jeanne only sees Cristina ‘in character’. The film is less about celebrity worship – Hadžihalilović eschews modern culture, setting her drama before the advent of mobile phones – and more about understanding the world with a diminished emotional and verbal vocabulary. Reality is fragmented. There is only what you can see and touch. Modern film...