Focusing on the everyday domesticity of the Auschwitz commandant's family might only reflect the horror indirectly, but the film pulls the banality of evil into pin-sharp focus.

A single, satanic joke burns through the celluloid in Jonathan Glazer's technically brilliant, uneasy Holocaust movie, freely adapted by the director from the novel by Martin Amis, a film which for all its artistry is perhaps not entirely in control of its (intentional) bad taste.

How did the placidly respectable home life of the German people coexist with imagining and executing the horrors of the genocide? How did such evil flower within what George Steiner famously called the German world of "silent night, holy night, gemütlichkeit"?

The film imagines the pure bucolic bliss experienced by Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) who with his family lives in a handsomely appointed family home with servants just outside the barbed-wire-topped wall. His wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) is thrilled with the Edenic "paradise garden" she has been allowed to supervise at the rear, complete with greenhouse: she revels smugly in her unofficial title "Queen of Auschwitz" - and with just that line alone, The Zone of Interest has probably delivered enough nausea for a thousand films.

The Hösses love to go fishing and bathing in the beautiful lakes and streams of the Polish countryside thereabouts, although at one stage Höss discovers what appears to be bone fragments and dark particulate matter in the river that has washed downstream from the camp and curtly orders his children out of the water and back to their lovely home for a wash...

Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian)

READ MORE: The Zone of Interest review - Jonathan Glazer adapts Martin Amis's chilling Holocaust drama | Cannes 2023 | The Guardian

Bittersweet tale of an apparently contented toilet cleaner has an ambient urban charm, but feels a little too understated.

Wim Wenders's new film, co-scripted by him with writer-director Takuma Takasaki, is a bittersweet quirky-Zen character study set in Tokyo which only comes fully to life in the final extended shot of the hero's face, drifting back and forth between happiness and sadness. There are some lovely magic-hour scenes from cinematographer Franz Lustig, shooting in the boxy "Academy" frame.

Hirayama, played by Koji Yakusho (from Shohei Imamura's The Eel) is a middle-aged man employed as a toilet cleaner, who drives around serenely from job to job in his van, listening to classic rock and pop on old-school audio cassettes: Patti Smith, the Kinks and of course, given the title, Lou Reed. At each location, he changes into a jumpsuit and with his brushes and mop matter-of-factly gets on with the job in hand.

With a hand-mirror, he has to check under the lavatory bowl and behind the urinals for ... well, never mind ... he never finds anything awful, and in fact the toilets are never remotely horrific. On his lunch-hour he reads and takes photos of trees and smiles acceptingly at everything that presents itself to his senses. He has a particular fondness for the city's "Skytree" tower. Hirayama has a goofy and unreliable young assistant whose purpose is to point up Hirayama's tolerant maturity and calm...

Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian)

READ MORE:

Perfect Days review - Wim Wenders explores a quiet life in Tokyo | Cannes 2023 | The Guardian

There's a bracing and chilly high-mindedness about Justine Triet's psychothriller, about a suspicious death whose only reliable witness happens to be blind.

I have been agnostic about Justine Triet's work in the past, but her courtroom drama murder mystery in this year's Cannes competition, with its ambiguous title and ambiguous dénouement, is very intriguing. It reminded me at various stages of Billy Wilder's Agatha Christie adaptation Witness for the Prosecution or Steven Bochco's underrated, under-remembered 90s TV drama Murder One.

Sandra Hüller plays Sandra, a successful and fashionable author (that staple figure of French cinema), German by birth, but now living in a handsome chalet in the French Alps with her French husband Samuel (Samuel Theis), a former academic and would-be author himself, who has now hit a career slump and creative block and is currently hoping to salvage the family finances by fixing up the chalet as an Airbnb. It is while he is grumpily sawing and hammering upstairs, with the music on too loud, that Sandra attempts to give an interview, which simply has to be abandoned because of the noise. Sandra wearily attempts to take a nap, while the couple's son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) takes their dog Snoop for a walk...

Peter Bradshaw

READ MORE: Anatomy of a Fall review - Sandra Hüller compels as an author accused of her husband's murder | Film | The Guardian

A northern pub landlord confronts locals' hostility towards Syrian refugees in Loach's latest - and possibly last - piece of politically trenchant cinema.

A decade or so ago, the rumour was that Ken Loach was getting ready to quit. Then began a new parade of Conservative prime ministers in this country, each shiftier and more mediocre than the last; Loach decided he had more to say and do after all. What followed was a blaze of energy, anger, and productivity culminating in a remarkable late surge - in fact, a trilogy, of which this might come to be seen as the final episode. Working with his regular collaborator, the screenwriter Paul Laverty, Loach has been taking on issues and stories that you don't see on the TV news or on glitzy streaming services and showed that film-makers could actually intervene in the real world. Loach got questions about poverty and austerity asked in parliament; he moved the dial...

BY Peter Bradshaw

READ MORE: The Old Oak review - Ken Loach's fierce final call for compassion and solidarity | Film | The Guardian

Fleeing and motherhood are dual crosses to bear in this powerful TIFF Platform entry from Spain, Rye Horn (O Corno) by Jaione Camborda.

In The Rye Horn, the shapeshifting second feature from Spanish filmmaker Jaione Camborda, presented in a world premiere at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival's prestigious Platform program, which was previously topped by Pablo Larraín's Jackie, Pietro Marcello's Martin Eden, and Indonesia's Kamila Andini for Yuni, and set to compete for Golden Shell at San Sebastian International Film Festival, is a striking and powerful drama that isn't only questing about how to be (or not to be) a mother but also shares a strong sense of sisterhood in a small Galician village and all the way to Portugal.

Set in Illa de Arousa in the 70s, the film opens with a truly remarkable, blistering, sweaty action scene where the main character Maria is helping another woman giving birth in her room. The scene, which contains a hell of performances from Janet Novás and Julia Gómez makes The Rye Horn worth the trip. They are handling the first act effortlessly, but it's Gómez (although this is her only major scene in the film) who leaves me mind-blowed at her emotional range, which induced tears in my eyes and left me breathless even before I knew what was coming next.

But it's definitely Novás who owns this film, she's the one to watch. Novas' immersive performance consists of mood scenes and attitude posturing that feel like a masterclass performance and endlessly rewards repeat viewing. In her acting debut, dancer Janet Novás stars as Maria, a 30-something woman who is known for helping other women in childbirth with special dedication and care. As soon as we learn that Maria is childless, we know that maternity isn't always rosy for some women. Her life suddenly went up in flames when Gómez's teenage girl asked for an abortion and then was forced to flee to one of the smuggling routes between Galicia and Portugal after the girl was found dead the next day...

By Abdul Latif

READ MORE: TIFF 2023: The Rye Horn (Platform) | Review - Film Fest Report (film-fest-report.com)