• Box Office Blues: When The Storm Comes, Take Shelter

    May 18, 2017 - By 

    Take Shelter, from writer/director Jeff Nichols, is a movie that examines the difficult issue of mental health with tender hands and great care. Nichols is quickly becoming, if not already considered to be, one of the great American story tellers. His partnership with Michael Shannon has spanned over several films and has reaped great rewards. Take Shelter is for me his finest piece of his work to date. Shannon play Curtis who is, frankly, just a normal man, a blue collar worker with a young family and a dog in the back yard behind the white picket fence. There is…

  • Loving

    February 2, 2017 - By 

    I could probably relate Loving quite easily to the colossal shitstorm currently raging in the United States as a result of the rise to power of the man Dan Savage memorably calls ‘Orange Julius Caesar’. I could tease out the parallels between the mid-twentieth century America of Loving, in which laws are used to deny peoples’ humanity, and Trump’s new playground. But that’s a rant best suited to Twitter, or maybe the pub. In any case, Loving offers a much more convincing and compassionate response to the politics of hate than me and my bleeding heart, wringing hands and jerking…