Category / 2025 films

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The Splinter of Iceland in the Heart

Volaða Land/Vanskabte Land (Godland, Hlynur Pálmason, 2022)

Ástin Sem Eftir Er (The Love That Remains, Hlynur Pálmason, 2025)

At the start of Vanskabte Land, we are told that the film was inspired by a cache of nineteenth-century photographs and the travelling priest, Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), documents his journey across Iceland to establish a church with his glass plate camera. The source is invented – but the rounded corners of the Academy ratio film are signifiers of photography and unexpected as a means of showing the landscape.

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A Bishop is Born

Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, 2025)

I saw John Bishop a few times at the Carbuncle — when he didn’t have to postpone for TV double bookings — and he was fine, if not in my top ten lives comedians. There was a backstory even then — he had abandoned some kind of sales job for another role on the road. The deeper story is that he had become estranged from his wife, inadvertantly did a comedy open mic in Manchester and realised he was good at it. One night, his soon to be ex-wife was in the audience and was someone shocked — but like what she saw and they were reconciled.

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