Islands

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Sue W I did not feel the film worked partly because too many aspects of the storylines are not believable and partly because it tries too hard to be suspenseful ( the music is very heavy) and sophisticated. There is suspense in the middle section of the film which is creating some interest. The start of the film and the end are boring, full of cliches and we lose interest in the characters very quickly. I can see that we are meant to dislike them but they all seem very self indulged. The film tries to be elegant but is straight out of this year’s what to wear summer fashion. The acting is detached and there is no chemistry between the main actors. The actor playing the inspector is very good and lifts the film for a while but this is too little.Visually, it is also boring and again straight out of a tourist brochure. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 09/21/25 Full Review Les N Fascinating. I can relate. I don't know if that's a good thing? Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 09/21/25 Full Review Hebden Bridge P Masterful storytelling which cranes the soul of the viewer. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 09/24/25 Full Review tm11999 M misleading film leads in every wrong direction until nothing happens, other than i think tom gets to boink the french girl, then everybody leaves and all goes back to the way it was. meh, but you can watch this if only to experience german film making. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 09/19/25 Full Review Alan W The components are familiar and deliberately Hitchcockian or Patricia Highsmith-ian in Jan-Ole Gerster's English debut feature. On a beautifully isolated hotel in the middle of a sandy Spanish holiday island, Sam Riley's washed-up tennis coach Tom seems to have the life of Riley that many of the hotel guests are envious of. If only they knew how he regularly wakes up alone and miserable in strange places like the middle of nowhere or some stranger's bed after a night of excesses. When Stacy Martin's Anne, a put upon wife with an obvious femme fatale vibe, and her husband, Jack Farthing's obnoxious and frivolous Dave, arrive at the hotel wanting tennis lessons for their son, Tom soon finds himself inexplicably drawn to the family and increasingly entangled in their affairs, especially when the police begins to suspect foul play after a night out with Dave. Like a film noir shot under an unrelenting Spanish sun, the screenplay, co-written by Gerster with two others, is a feast of red herrings that intentionally lead its audience to make certain conclusions, only to undercut those genre expectations with a brutal playfulness. As a director, Gerster proves he has an eye for striking visual compositions, making the best out of the exotic sandy and beachy locations available. While I can't say I particularly warmed to Riley's mannered performance, his Tom is clearly haunted by an unhappy wailing emptiness that's brooding inside him and the yearning for human connections that gets him deeper and deeper into a web of troubles. If the elliptical ending is a little abrupt, even art-house pretentious, it's weirdly congruous to what this film really is about, a character study masquerading as a thriller, where those familiar elements are merely fancy misdirections and distractions. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 09/16/25 Full Review MB C “Islands” is a visually striking psychological drama set against the beauty of the Canary Islands.... Strong performances and atmospheric direction capture themes of desire, guilt, and escape, yet the film falters with slow pacing and a late shift into formulaic mystery....A haunting but uneven work that lingers more for its mood than its story.... Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 09/12/25 Full Review Read all reviews

Islands

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