Graham Fuller

One Battle After Another review - Paul Thomas Anderson satirises America's culture wars Paul Thomas Anderson’s frantic One Battle After Another is a storm warning for a fascist America and both a lament and a rallying call for revolutionary fervour.

"One Battle After Another" is Paul Thomas Anderson's timeliest film yet.
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Shoegazers of the World Unite: NewDad's NewDisc is an angsty dream-pop delight. theartsdesk.com/new-music/al...

I wrote an essay on Werner Herzog's "Aguirre, Wrath of God," newly released on a BFI 4K UHD and BFI Blu-ray. It's much more than a fever dream.
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The updated edition of my book of interviews with Ken Loach is published by Faber tomorrow. Adding to our earlier discussions of Loach's work from 1963 to 1998, it covers the 18 films he made from "My Name Is Joe" to "The Old Oak". Formidable.

The Kingdom review - coming of age as the body count rises The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree is the bitter message of The Kingdom. Director and co-writer Julien Colonna’s nerve-fraying drama about an adolescent girl’s sudden immersion in the brutal, ub...

Depicting Corsican mob vendettas from a teenage girl's perspective, "The Kingdom" is one of the best films of the year. It's just opened in the UK.

Hot Milk review - a mother of a problem Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk, adapted from Deborah Levy’s 2016 Man Booker shortlistee, has been described as a "psychological drama". Strictly speaking, it's a psychoanalytic one – a clue-sprinkled c...

In Rebecca Lenkiewicz's thorny directorial debut, Sofia (Emma Mackey) must deal with her mother and her lover's buried traumas as they're gradually disinterred. What's a woman to do?

Lollipop review - a family torn apart On leaving prison, Lollipop’s thirtyish single mum Molly discovers that reclaiming her kids from social care is akin to doing lengths in a shark-infested swimming pool teeming with naval mines.

Daisy-May Hudson's "Lollipop" depicts the struggle of a homeless single mother to regain custody of her kids - featuring a gut-wrenching performance by Posy Sterling, the film is socially depleted modern Britain in a nutshell.

Good One review - a life lesson in the wild with her dad and his pal Good One is a generation-and-gender gap drama that mostly unfolds during a weekend hiking and camping trip in the Catskills Forest Preserve in upstate New York. A putative indie classic, writer-direct...

India Donaldson's exceptional indie drama "Good One" opens in the UK today. "Deliverance" for modern times?

'Classic-era prog’s Olympian pinnacle': Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' returns in their restored Pompeii concert film and as Nick Mason's band's vinyl hit Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”, the ineffable progressive rock epic that occupies side two of 1971’s Meddle, is having a moment. Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets released a sensational one-sided 12-inch vinyl...

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets and Steven Wilson have breathed new life into Pink Floyd's "Echoes". I wrote an essay on it for The Arts Desk.

Restless review - curse of the noisy neigbours Horror comes in many forms. In writer-director Jed Hart’s feature debut Restless, it’s visited on middle-aged nurse Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal) by thirtyish Deano (Aston McAuley), the superficially affabl...

To the artist in the apartment above ours who thumps things loudly and repetitively after midnight, I dedicate this review of the new movie "Restless."

Misericordia review - mushroom-gathering and murder in rural France “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” The Aesop-ian maxim roughly applies to Jérémie Pastor (Félix Kysyl) in Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia. Though unemployed Toulouse baker Jérémie doesn’...

"Queerer and queerer," said Alice, anticipating the release of Alain Guiraudie's hilarious new morality-buster "Misericordia."

Album: Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt - Loose Talk On the spoken word LP Loose Talk, Amelia Barratt reflects on her or other women’s experiences, real or imagined, over tunes drawn from Bryan Ferry’s demos, some from early in his career. To hear his i...

Music and poetry can make uneasy bedfellows – a rare exception being composer Jim Parker's collaborations with John Betjeman. Here's another – Bryan Ferry and writer-artist Amelia Barratt's evocative "Loose Talk" LP, which I reviewed for The Arts Desk.

Album: Steven Wilson - The Overview Steven Wilson’s cinematic concept album The Overview is named for the cognitive shift required of astronauts and others who’ve observed Earth from space and been humbled by both its beauty and its – a...

I do love a sweeping prog rock concept album. Steven Wilson's "The Overview", which I reviewed for The Arts Desk, is a glorious one - that's if you don't mind it auguring the end of everything that exists in the universe.

On Falling review - human cogs in a merciless machine Alienation, isolation, and instability are the fruits of working as a “picker” in the chilling labour drama On Falling. The first feature written and directed by the Porto-born, Edinburgh-based filmma...

Laura Carreira's chilling debut feature "On Falling" exposes the mind-crushing misery of gig economy work in a Scottish "fulfilment center" – it's close to a horror movie.

My detailed look at Jesse Eisenberg's "A Real Pain," published online at Cineaste. www.cineaste.com/spring2025/a...

Blu-ray: Hitchcock - The Beginning There's a tension in Alfred Hitchcock’s early films between misogyny and condemnation of the patriarchal suppression of women. The suppression was inherent in the original sources from which The Pleas...

Hitchcock, the young tormentor.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim review Director Kamiyama Kenji expands on J. R. R. Tolkien’s source material with an all too familiar animated adventure that follows teen heroine Héra, shieldmaiden of Rohan.

"The Lord of the Rings" franchise goes for girl power - exploitatively.

Blu-ray: Black Tuesday The universal fear of dying is the theme of Black Tuesday, a terse, bleak 1954 thriller that is belatedly being recognized as a major film noir and has just been released on a Masters of Cinema Blu-ra...

Hugo Fregonese's film noir "Black Tuesday" (1954), newly released on a UK Blu-ray, is fatalism incarnate.

Bird review - travails of an unseen English tween There’s a jolt or a surprise in almost every shot in Andrea Arnold’s Bird – her most impacted and energised depiction of underclass life yet. Photographed by Robbie Ryan, it’s a visual tour de force, ...

In terms of marrying marrying emotions to compositions, "Bird' is Andrea Arnold's most dynamic film yet. I'd love to see it on a double bill with "American Honey".

Blitz review - racism persists as bombs batter London Blitz, set on a vast CGI canvas in September 1941, is an improbable boy’s adventure tale that depicts the misery and terror that was inflicted on East Londoners by Germany’s eight-month bombardment. T...

"Blitz' suffers from being a child's adventure story. I wonder if McQueen was influenced by Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun".