Film Review: The Judge
Being a woman in the modern world is difficult as it is but to try and live your life in a Muslim country, dominated by tradition and patriarchal religious values, must be extremely taxing. In the case of Palestine, there’s the extra complicating factor of living under Israeli oppression. Imagine, under all these circumstances, being …
Incoming: Suspiria
A darkness swirls at the centre of a world-renowned dance company, one that will engulf the artistic director, an ambitious young dancer, and a grieving psychotherapist. Some will succumb to the nightmare. Others will finally wake up. Suspiria is in cinemas from 16 November.
Blu-ray Review: Invention for Destruction
Whilst Karel Zeman may have only made six full length ‘live action’ films, every one of them is a meticulously crafted work of art. Between 1955 and 1970, emancipated by the imagination of Jules Verne and his fantastical worlds, he melded his masterpieces with animation to create tales which thrill and beguile. He inspired the …
Film Review: The Price of Everything
Whilst the debate about what constitutes art rumbles inexorably on, what it means to be an artist has undeniably changed in our contemporary materialistic world. Although artists have always had patrons, the relationship between art, money and collectors has undoubtedly shifted. Today, art has become a commodity. To be bought, sold and invested in. Pieces …
Incoming: 3 Days in Quiberon
1981 Quiberon, a small village on the coast of Brittany, France. Romy Schneider, the biggest female star in Europe of her time, has retreated to a spa hotel to escape the pressures of her life. The young journalist Michael Jürgs and Romy’s long-time acquaintance, photographer Robert Lebeck, arrive to conduct an interview for the famous …
Film Review: The Workshop
Anyone reaching adulthood in 2018 finds themselves in a strange and scary place. The world has been raped and pillaged by previous generations. Environment collapse, rampant capitalism, severe inequalities, racial tensions, high unemployment, fake news, online bullying – the list is endless. Many find themselves with limited job prospects and little chance of ever owning …
Blu-ray Review: Dangan Runner
Today, streaming has become the norm and is beginning to challenge the mainstream cinematic experience. Whilst this creates a problem by preventing audiences seeing a film as the director intended, in a cinema, it affords those films excluded from theatrical releases a chance. In many ways it’s history repeating. Straight-to-video is now straight-to-stream. In Japan, …
Incoming: Overlord
With only hours until D-Day, a team of American paratroopers drop into Nazi-occupied France to carry out a mission that’s crucial to the invasion’s success. Tasked with destroying a radio transmitter atop a fortified church, the desperate soldiers join forces with a young French villager to penetrate the walls and take down the tower. But, …
Incoming: Wildlife
Fourteen-year-old Joe is the only child of Jeanette and Jerry—a housewife and a golf pro—in a small town in 1960s Montana. Nearby, an uncontrolled forest fire rages close to the Canadian border, and when Jerry loses his job—and his sense of purpose—he decides to join the cause of fighting the fire, leaving his wife and …
Film Review: Waru
To the outside world, New Zealand is often personified by its breathtakingly beautiful natural features; conjured up so majestically by Peter Jackson in his Lord of the Rings films. However, in contrast to its Antipodean neighbour, very little of Kiwi society is ever shown outside of its borders. This is especially the case when it …