James Saynor

United Kingdom

Film Reviews at The Arts Desk

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Red Path review - the dead know everything

1 week ago | theartsdesk.com | James Saynor

Here’s a film you might not feel like seeing. After all, Red Path tells of a 14-year-old in Tunisia who is forced to carry home the head of his teenage cousin after the cousin is executed by jihadists. But see the film you really should.
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the French can do you-know-who

2 weeks ago | theartsdesk.com | James Saynor

Do the French do irony? Well, was Astérix a Gaul? Obviously they do, and do it pretty well to judge by many of their movies down the decades. As we brave the salutes on this side of the Channel to arch irony-spinner Jane Austen’s 250th birth-year – from gushing BBC documentaries to actually quite witty Hallmark cable movies – France offers up Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, a cordial, low-energy rom com that sets out to Austenify the lovelorn of Paris.
Magic Farm review - numpties from the Nineties

1 month ago | theartsdesk.com | James Saynor

There’s nothing more healthy than dissing your own dad, and filmmaker Amalia Ulman says that her old man was “a Gen X deadbeat edgelord skater” when she was growing up in the 1990s. The phrase brings the half-forgotten world of Generation X back to us from the mists of time, with its slackers and Douglas Coupland books and mumbling evasions.
The Ugly Stepsister review - gleeful Grimm revamp

2 months ago | theartsdesk.com | James Saynor

Although both of the Brothers Grimm died around 1860, they still insist on getting dozens of film and TV credits in each decade of our present age. They might be seen, in a sense, as inventing the modern horror movie far more than Poe or Shelley or Stoker – largely because of their stories’ especially swingeing violence.
Sister Midnight review - the runaway bridegroom

Mar 13, 2025 | theartsdesk.com | James Saynor

Marriage is not often presented in cinema as a bowl of mangoes, but it’s rarely shown as so morbidly strange as in this reckless corker of a debut feature written and directed by Karan Kandhari, and backed by Film4. We meet the newly hitched – that is, thrown together – Uma and Gopal on a train to their new marital home (a small hut) on the ragged edges of today’s Mumbai. She sits bolt upright in the carriage behind her wedding veil; he is slumped out cold beside her.
To a Land Unknown review - the migrant hustle

Feb 14, 2025 | theartsdesk.com | James Saynor

The Refugee Movie is rapidly becoming a genre unto itself, with elements of suspense and humanism woven together into something that’s very properly cinematic. Films like Io Capitano and Green Border, tracking the tragic migrant trail to and through Europe, prick consciences and sweat palms in equal measure, but those two fine examples from last year were made by European directors on helicopter missions, as it were, to raise consciousness and to mine fresh seams of character.
The Brutalist review - we're building to something

Jan 23, 2025 | theartsdesk.com | James Saynor

There’s a moment, as we build to a climax in Brady Corbet’s first film, The Childhood of a Leader (2015), when a servant at a grand house unwittingly nudges a candle into the path of a dangling curtain pull. The tassel ignites, unseen by gathering dinner guests. Then something happens that’s rare in the annals of film. In fact, nothing happens. The drapery is not particularly flammable and, unseen by anyone in a lingering wide shot, burns itself quickly out.
The Apprentice review - from chump to Trump

Oct 17, 2024 | theartsdesk.com | James Saynor

It’s common to say that Shakespeare would have liked such-and-such a modern story, but I think he actually might have gone for this one. The Bard’s eye was drawn to cruelty at every turn, and bad-to-the-bone cruelty seeps from each scene of The Apprentice, a drama about Donald Trump’s rise to fame and gain.
Joker: Folie à Deux review - supervillainy laid low

Oct 3, 2024 | theartsdesk.com | James Saynor

“Psychopaths sell like hotcakes,” William Holden observed in Sunset Boulevard in 1950, and those individuals have been doing good business for Hollywood before and since. We root for them and we don’t root for them at the same time, which is perhaps why not everyone in Hollywood has agreed with the hotcake thing.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice review - a lively resurrection

Sep 9, 2024 | theartsdesk.com | James Saynor

Sometimes love never dies and the dead never rot. A lot of water has flowed down the River Styx since Tim Burton’s first Beetlejuice film in 1988, but the bones of the original have held up surprisingly well, the madcap morbid spoof outliving many of its peers from the “high concept” era.