Nicolas Rapold

6 days ago | bfi.org.uk | Francesca Steele |Nicolas Rapold |Jonathan Romney |Christina Newland

Like a jauntier Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), The Ballad of Wallis Island is an affecting comedy that contemplates the pains and pleasures of a musical career in freefall. And as it happens, like the Coen brothers’ film, it stars Carey Mulligan as a woman who represents the protagonist’s romantic failure. Tom Basden is McGwyer, an arrogant, embittered musician racked with self-loathing over desperate celebrity behaviour, like teeth-whitening.

1 week ago | bfi.org.uk | Nicolas Rapold Festivals |Nicolas Rapold |Jonathan Romney |Christina Newland

Josh O’Connor stars as a wannabe criminal who fumbles a small-time art robbery in Reichardt’s ingenious evocation of 1970s suburban Massachusetts. 29 May 2025Reviewed from the 2025 Cannes Film FestivalHeist movies run on the mechanics of escape and the thrill of getting away with it, but Kelly Reichardt’s latest detoured story brilliantly turns the genre on its head.

1 week ago | bfi.org.uk | John Bleasdale Festivals |John Bleasdale |Sophie Monks Kaufman |Nicolas Rapold

Reviewed from the 2025 Cannes Film FestivalLove comes in all shapes and sizes. For Colin (Harry Melling), a floppy haired traffic warden, it comes in the superhuman form of a leather clad Alexander Skarsgård, playing Ray, a biker who sees something in Colin and decides to take him on an erotic ride of submission and domination. Colin’s job puts him in the firing line of almost daily abuse and opprobrium.

1 week ago | bfi.org.uk | Sophie Monks Kaufman |Nicolas Rapold |Henry Miller |Mark Asch

Most cinephiles are prone to the fantasy that if you make – or watch – the right film, life-changing consequences will arise. In Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, his follow-up to the widely beloved The Worst Person in the World (2022), the director explores the relationship between a disappointing dad and his two daughters.

1 week ago | bfi.org.uk | Nicolas Rapold Festivals |Nicolas Rapold |Henry Miller |Mark Asch

The American director goes behind the scenes of Breathless’ historic production for a film that embraces Jean-Luc Godard’s cinephile passion and formal imagination. 23 May 2025Reviewed from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival“The best way to criticise a film is to make one,” runs the famous Godard axiom, and perhaps the same goes for loving one, where the criticism takes the form of a thoroughgoing attention to all the finer points.