• Victoria & Abdul

    September 18, 2017 - By 

    In this era of cinematic universes and franchises, it’s easy to forget that British cinema has one of its own: the Royal family. The huge success globally of films like The Queen and The King’s Speech means that the subject continues to be revisited even as support for the real British Royal family wanes. So, in 2010 when Shrabani Basu published a book revealing a hitherto unknown relationship between Queen Victoria and an Indian servant, Abdul Kareem, a film version was inevitable, and seven years later here we are. Victoria & Abdul details the story of a young Indian man…

  • Wind River

    September 8, 2017 - By 

    Taylor Sheridan’s America is an exhausted, shrinking land. Land is a recurring theme for Sheridan, the screenwriter behind two of the best neo-Westerns of recent years, Sicario (directed by Denis Villeneuve) and Hell or High Water (directed by David McKenzie), the latter earning him an Academy nomination. Who owns the land, who takes it, who protects it and — most importantly — what kind of justice is available on it. Both films used frontier geography to tell stories about endings and broken systems, and the moral compromises of righteous avengers. For Wind River, Sheridan directs too. It’s not his directing debut — he did 2011 horror…

  • The Farthest

    September 7, 2017 - By 

    Whether or not space exploration is your thing, The Farthest is an essential documentary that tells the amazing story of the Voyager mission that was launched in August 1977, with the aim of exploring the outer regions of our solar system and beyond. But what is every bit as interesting as the scientific aspect of the mission is the gold vinyl cargo containing various messages and media – even encoded pictures – from earth for any would-be extraterrestrials that might come into contact with the two space crafts. An interstellar message in a bottle, you might say. Director Emer Reynolds…

  • It

    September 6, 2017 - By 

    Right on schedule, it’s 27 years later and we’re back in Derry. It was inevitable that Stephen King’s It, immortalised by Tommy Lee Wallace and Lawrence D. Cohen’s TV movie and Tim Curry’s childhood-scarring circus fiend, would get drawn into the Hollywood remake machine, even if the story’s theme of inter-generational recurrence does at least provide a meta-logic. The first half of Warner Bros’ two-parter, Mama director Andy Muschietti has been tasked with introducing a new generation to King’s Losers Club and the shape-shifting clown that’s buttering them up with sweet, tasty fear. And fair enough: for younger horror fans,…

  • Patti Cake$

    September 1, 2017 - By 

    Geremy Jasper, former vocalist of 00’s New York band The Tears, has channeled his younger creative frustrations into feature debut and Sundance hit Patti Cake$, an upbeat tale of an unlikely hip-hop hustler and solid contender for the year’s feel-good rankings. Its got magic indie dust and an against-the-odds underdog ethos and its leads, Danielle Macdonald and Siddharth Dhananjay, two best friends and hip-hop partners, are a memorable and winning double act. Macdonald is Patricia Dombrowski, aka Dumbo, aka Killer P (the titular tag comes later), a plus-size, white, ginger woman desperate for rap glory. Dhananjay is Jheri, an Indian-American who…

  • Rough Night

    August 31, 2017 - By 

    The one-two punch of last month’s raucous Girls Trip and, now, Rough Night, has sent columnist chins a-stroking about the mainstreaming of the ladette comedy and the gender politics surrounding it. To be fair, the films are noticeably similar in tone and structure, focusing on a group of quasi-estranged old college girlfriends who meet up for an escapist trip of partying, raunchy talk, and bonding. Some have changes in their life they haven’t shared with the others; others have unspoken tensions about adulthood’s diverging priorities. The friends drink, fall out, and make up. (And kill a stripper) Rough Night centres…

  • David Lynch: The Art Life

    August 31, 2017 - By 

    After five years in the making that started off with a Kickstarter campaign, directors Jon Nyugen (Lynch), Rick Barnes and Olivia Neergaard-Holm’s (Victoria) biopic documentary The Art Life is the quintessential homage and insight into the extraordinary career of David Lynch (Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive). And while the focus is directed on his painting and influences from his childhood onwards, the insights into his work processes and day-to-day life are remarkably honest and enlightening, making for an essential watch for any fans of his films, music or art. Initially, we are introduced to Lynch as he works on a painting in his…

  • Final Portrait

    August 23, 2017 - By 

    Final Portrait is actor Stanley Tucci’s fourth film as writer-director and shares with Big Night, his 1996 gastro-drama debut, an interest in artisans and their obsessions; though in comparison, it’s an amuse-bouche. Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, living in 60s Paris, explains the changes in portraiture philosophy to James Lord, a young American fan and writer who is sitting for one of his own. Portraits used to be finished articles, a frizzle-topped Geoffrey Rush explains, because the subject needed a likeness and a double; the advent of photography has erased that. His portraits are, he admits, essentially unfinished; laboured and inspired…

  • Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle

    August 18, 2017 - By 

    In 2015’s Sleaford Mods: Invisible Britain, film-maker Paul Sng used the Nottingham duo to tell a story about British working class discontent in the age of austerity. His new film, Dispossession: The Great Housing Swindle, takes a longer historical perspective, aiming to examine the failures and dysfunctions of modern British housing. As Maxine Peak’s narration outlines, post-war liberalism championed the country’s new council estates as fulfillments of a democratic promise, ambitious concrete guarantors of secure and dignified shelter. How, the documentary asks, did we get to the present moment, when the term ‘council estate’ is mouthed with a sneer? How…

  • Everything, Everything

    August 18, 2017 - By 

    The heroine of young-adult romance Everything, Everything, adapted from Nicola Yoon’s novel of the same name, lives in a bubble. Thanks to a complicated autoimmune condition, Maddie (Amandla Stenberg) is vulnerable to the common bacteria bugs of everyday life. For Maddie’s own protection, her mother, a doctor and her only living family, keeps her inside their specially designed, expensive-looking, air-sealed house. After she got sick as an infant, she’s never ventured outside the home. So she stays inside, reading books and blogs about them on her nice Mac, while dreaming of a life outside of the see-through walls. In concept,…