Jessica Kiang

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | David KatzFestivals |David Katz |Nicolas Rapold |Jessica Kiang

A talented teenager causes a stir with a provocative memoir about her relationship with her teacher in Dag Johan Haugerud’s literary Golden Bear winner. 28 February 2025Reviewed from the 2025 Berlin International Film FestivalThere’s a certain harmony between contemporary Norwegian cinema and literature. Karl Ove Knausgård, one of the most influential writers of autofiction, hails from Norway, and has benefitted from its handsome grants for cultural production.

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Nicolas Rapold Festivals |Nicolas Rapold |Jessica Kiang |Sam Wigley

Reviewed from the 2025 Berlin International Film FestivalRichard Linklater’s Blue Moon portrays the long goodbye of a great American lyricist, Lorenz Hart, told through the filmmaker’s mastery of creative time frames and poignant reflection. As witty and alert as its fading subject, it takes place within a Manhattan bar on the opening night of Oklahoma!, the inescapable 1943 classic by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II and notably notHart, Rodgers’s former partner.

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Jessica Kiang |Sam Wigley |Rachel Pronger

Anderson sparkles as the older Vegas showgirl Shelly, but Gia Coppola’s film is overly dependent on the blurred lines between its character and star. 28 February 2025As much as it loves tearing them down, Hollywood loves to build its icons back up. Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl is a small, breathy indie that’s precision-tooled to kickstart the career resurrection of 1990s über-babe Pamela Anderson.

2 months ago | bfi.org.uk | Nick James |Nicolas Rapold |Jessica Kiang |Sam Wigley

A swimmer floats on her back off Copacabana Beach as a helicopter flies above. She is Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), whose five children are playing beach volleyball while a stray dog keeps interfering. The family’s blissful life of affection and closeness is signalled by the children’s adoption of the dog, agreed to by their easy-going, burly engineer father Rubens (Selton Mello), the figure on whom, at first, the film centres.

Jan 16, 2025 | bfi.org.uk | Anton Bitel |Guy Lodge |Catherine Wheatley |Jessica Kiang

Leigh Whannell’s werewolf reimagining magnifies the shifting tensions within a young family as Christopher Abbott is cursed with a monstrous inheritance. 16 January 2025“This view never gets old, does it? No matter how many times you see it.” The speaker is Grady Lowell (Sam Jaeger), an ex-Marine survivalist and single father raising his young son Blake (Zac Chandler) with the toughest kind of love on their remote off-grid Oregon property.