• Isn’t It Romantic

    March 7, 2019 - By 

    A young girl named Natalie watches Pretty Woman in an early 1990s sitting room. Her mother pours a glass of wine and warns that they don’t make movies about girls like us. Except Hollywood does. Isn’t It Romantic is a romantic comedy disguised as a parody of the genre. The characters run through every convention of the sometimes unfairly maligned genre while proclaiming that they are not falling for its charms. You can guess what happens next. Adult Natalie (Rebel Wilson) is disenchanted with idea of love and a cynic about romantic comedies. After a mugging, she wakes up in…

  • Velvet Buzzsaw

    February 11, 2019 - By 

    What’s the point of art if nobody sees it? This is one of the questions posed by a character in Velvet Buzzsaw, a satire released last weekend on Netflix that wants to sink its teeth into the contemporary art world but fails to leave a lasting impression. The discovery of a series of revolutionary paintings by an unknown and reclusive artist sets off a feeding frenzy among the galleries, museums and art buyers based in Los Angeles. This space is dominated by critic Morf Vandewalt (Jake Gyllenhaal), a man who views everything through the lens of critique but is struggling…

  • Destroyer

    January 29, 2019 - By 

    In Destroyer, Nicole Kidman is cast against type as Erin Bell, a Los Angeles homicide detective haunted by her past. It’s a startling performance from Kidman and one that could have put her in the running to feature in the best actress category at this year’s Academy Awards. We can wonder about the reasons for the omission another time. Destroyer is a middling thriller that benefits enormously from the work of its outstanding lead. When a body is discovered on the streets of LA, Erin Bell comes to believe that the murder is connected to a botched undercover operation she…

  • Rosie

    October 19, 2018 - By 

    Rosie’s tagline describes the film “inspired by too many true stories” of families affected by homelessness. It is an affecting and vital exploration of Ireland’s housing crisis through the concentrated study of one Dublin working class family’s experiences. Unable to find a house after their landlord decides to sell their home, Rosie (Sarah Greene, Black 47, Dublin Oldschool), her partner John Paul (Moe Dunford, Michael Inside) and their four children have been sleeping in hotel rooms unsure where they will be staying next. The children are often late for school because the family have been staying in hotels across county…

  • To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before

    August 31, 2018 - By 

      There’s little in life as complicated and intense as first love. The near-universality of this experience makes it the perfect source material for film. To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before is the latest Netflix original film and it happens to be a cute, screwball coming of age story wrapped inside a rom-com for the digitally native teen. Based on the successful YA novel by Jenny Han, five love letters (never intended to be seen by the objects of affection) find their way out of a hatbox and into the world. When Lara Jean (Lana Condor) realizes her crushes…

  • Set It Up

    June 21, 2018 - By 

    A romantic comedy designed from the stuff of nightmares for HR departments, Set It Up is an entertaining if slight story about workplace romances, demanding bosses and overworked employees. The main romance is between two overworked assistants who decide to set their demanding bosses up in the hope of spending less time in the office. Harper (Zoey Deutch), a sports and popcorn obsessive, wants to write and date but struggles to do either because of the hours she puts in at the office. Charlie (Glen Powell) is looking to secure a promotion to increase his salary while maintaining his relationship with his model girlfriend…

  • Mercury 13

    April 26, 2018 - By 

    We might not be able to change the past, but there is always the opportunity to learn from it. This is the central theme of Mercury 13, the latest release in Netflix’s original documentary strand. It tells the story of the women who aspired to be among the first astronauts but faced rejection because of their sex. In 1960, 25 women were chosen to take part in a privately funded ‘women in space’ study. The project was organised by Dr Randy Loveless who had supervised the selection tests for NASA’s first astronauts, the Mercury 7. Each woman was a highly…

  • Michael Inside

    April 12, 2018 - By 

    There can be a certain suspicion about films that generate a lot of positive advance word. Can any film really be that good? Is it all hype? Thankfully, the fuss about Michael Inside is justified. This is a terrific piece of film-making about the consequences of one moment in a young man’s life. Michael McCrea (Dafhyd Flynn) is 18 years old and lives with his grandfather Francis (Lalor Roddy) in a housing estate in a disadvantaged area of Dublin. His father is in prison and his mother died from a drugs overdose when he was younger. Michael has plans to…

  • A Wrinkle in Time

    March 28, 2018 - By 

    In ‘Anthem’ Leonard Cohen sang ‘there is a crack in everything/that’s how the light gets in.’ These lines have been adopted as an inspirational saying by many but they also reflect the idea that it is often the imperfections that make an object beautiful. Perhaps, the same can be said about the flaws in Disney’s latest big budget children’s film A Wrinkle in Time. Teenage Meg Murray (Storm Reid) is struggling following her scientist father’s disappearance four years earlier. Isolated and lonely, Meg’s grief has made as a social outcast who is out of sync with her peers and losing…

  • You Can’t Be What You Can’t See: Films About Real Women

    March 6, 2018 - By 

    When it comes to women in film, lasting progress has been slow. While it is positive that the two highest grossing films internationally in 2017 had female protagonists, more work remains to be done both in front of and behind the camera. Promoting the visibility of women onscreen ultimately means telling stories that recognise the complicated and messy lives that actual women lead. Here, there is still some distance to go. Research by the Center for Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University identified that film audiences in 2017 were twice as likely to see a male…