• Hidden Figures

    February 17, 2017 - By 

    How the stories of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson managed to not become common lore in NASA’s history until now could only be put down to racial and gender prejudice. And while writer/director Ted Melfi (St Vincent) has told this inspiringly important and fascinating story to a decent degree, Hidden Figures is let down by a hokey script that is laced with safe racism, giving the film a conventional Hollywood feel, one that takes away from the remarkable story. During the space race between the USA and the USSR in the 1960s, three African-American women broke huge…

  • Prevenge

    February 13, 2017 - By 

    You have to admire Alice Lowe’s (Sightseers) directorial debut for the logistical nightmare of filming it alone. As writer, director and star of Prevenge, she had the insane idea to make a low budget, satirical slasher while 8 months pregnant, making it a labour of love of the most darkly comic and macabre kind. As a pregnant woman named Ruth (Lowe) ruthlessly slices the throat of the obnoxious man who owns a reptile shop, the viewer is left wondering what her motives are – besides him being a complete sleaze. As the story moves along and the deaths pile up,…

  • Christine

    February 9, 2017 - By 

    The line ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ marks a key moment in director Antonio Campos’ (Simon Killer) latest movie Christine, about the grim story of US newswoman Christine Chubbuck. Based on real events, this deeply cynical line is delivered in a time when the news started to turn tabloid in the 70s, and sums up much of what the filmmaker is criticising in this shocking, yet intensely mesmerising, depiction of the reporter’s last days. Rebecca Hall (The Gift) stars as Chubbuck, an intelligent but highly strung news reporter whose personal life and career collide, causing her world to spiral out of…

  • Split

    January 29, 2017 - By 

    Split lives up to its title in dividing my opinion right down the middle. I’m not sure whether it’s a load of gratuitous, pseudo psychology nonsense or an entertaining exploitation thriller/horror. Thankfully, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) has managed to break out of his disappointing – sometimes awful – run of films since the mid-2000s, by pulling an inspired performance out of James McAvoy (X-Men: First Class) and creating an intriguingly sinister story with a surprising bite in its finale. It may be generic at its core, containing a few too many plot holes, but Split is clearly…

  • Silence

    January 14, 2017 - By 

    Martin Scorsese has to be commended for taking on the adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s 1966 book of the same name, as Silence requires a deep understanding of Japan, its history and its people. And while what he achieves is impressive with the overall outlook and feel of the film, I have to admit that I felt there was problems with the representation of the Japanese Christians for the first half, along with some of the more grim scenes of violence and torture later on. If you are familiar with some of the many classic Japanese films of this era like Rashomon…

  • Allied

    December 20, 2016 - By 

    Allied is one of those films that defies logic. It has all the ingredients needed to make a potential classic, as it has Robert Zemeckis (Back To The Future) on directing duties, Steven Knight (Locke) on the script and Brad Pitt (Fight Club) and Marion Cotillard (Macbeth) in starring roles. So how they managed to create a load of over-stylised nonsense is mindbogglingly frustrating, but the usually reliable director has pulled it off. The story kicks off with an introduction to Pitt’s character – a Canadian spy working for the British army – as he is air dropped into the…

  • One More Time With Feeling

    December 3, 2016 - By 

    As the credits roll on Andrew Dominik’s latest film, a documentary charting the first performance of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’ album Skeleton Tree, the words stunning, unique, heartbreaking, profound, tragic, funny, melancholy, raw, honest and awesome all come to mind. But that would sell this remarkable film short, as its devastatingly intrusive climax is softened by a mature and respectful depiction of what has to be an incredibly hard period for Cave, as he deals with the accidental death of one of his twin sons. One More Time With Feeling kicks off with candid interviews of long-time Bad…

  • The Accountant

    November 21, 2016 - By 

    If there was an award for the most ludicrous film of the year, then Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant would surely win, hands down. But there is a certain, self-aware charm to the film that has grown on me like a virus, as there is no doubt that the director is having fun when the main protagonist is basically an autistic Batman – minus the suit – who works as a gifted accountant while having a knack for killing people. And he partakes in the practice of killing rather a lot… The Accountant tells the story of a mysterious man with…

  • Nocturnal Animals

    November 14, 2016 - By 

    With an opening that has to be one of the most unforgettable movie experiences that you’ll ever see, writer/director Tom Ford (A Single Man) has created a dark, complex and thought-provoking drama, that transcends genres in a stylishly original fashion, while touching on some hard-hitting issues that are highly relevant in today’s image and success-obsessed society. Amy Adams (The Master) stars as an accomplished artist, who has just received a book manuscript in the post from her ex-husband, Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko), who is an aspiring novelist. With a dedication to her at the beginning, Adam’s character immediately starts to…

  • Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World

    October 25, 2016 - By 

    The great Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo) is back doing what he does best – documentary filmmaking. With Lo and Behold, his inquisitive eye is cast over the world of the internet; its past, present and future, with highly informative and entertaining results. The opening shot is met by the unmistakable voice of the man himself, as he introduces one of the original pioneers of the internet, Leonard Kleinrock. He guides us into a perfectly recreated and preserved room, from which the first internet message was sent in 1969, and informs the viewer, with much gusto, as to what this message was.…