FIlm Review
Film Review: Island of Hungry Ghosts
Whilst it may no longer be front page news unless it impacts directly on our shores, the refugee crisis remains one of the most pressing global issues. This has been reflected in recent documentary film making, most notably in Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea and Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow. These both approach their subject from …
Film Review: One Cut of the Dead
It’s all too easy to be overly critical and forget how incredibly difficult it is to make a feature film. How much time and effort is invested by a whole host of people to make it happen. The venture itself is a mammoth task with so many risks, dependencies and critical success factors that it’s …
Film Review: The 12th Man
Whilst we all know that World War II was fought between the Axis and Allies, the majority of the Western gaze tends to linger on events surrounding Germany, Britain, Italy, France, Japan, Russia and America. However, the arena of war stretched across several continents and involved almost one hundred different countries. Today, there’s a general …
Film Review: Papillon
Cinema has blessed the world with several great prison dramas. Indeed, The Shawshank Redemption regularly features at the top of ‘greatest films’ lists. Then there’s Cool Hand Luke, The Grand Illusion, Escape from Alcatraz, The Rock, The Great Escape and many, many more. As well as the former Christmas favourite, Steve McQueen also starred behind …
Film Review: Final Score
It’s extraordinary to think that professional wrestling has become such a popular access point into the world of Hollywood (and even more strangely, politics!). Then again, you could argue it’s as much about entertainment as sport. When it comes to making that transition, no one has been more successful than Dwayne Johnson/The Rock. However, both …
Film Review: An Elephant Sitting Still
2018 has been a great year for first-time film-makers. Some of the best cinema created around the world has been produced by directors making their feature debuts. Whether those film are huge smashes such as Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born or Ari Aster’s Hereditary or surprise successes like Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You …
Film Review: 1985
The 1980s was a remarkable decade in many ways. It was arguably the last great decade for cinema and one of the most interesting musically. Then there’s there was the fashion….Whilst it was an era characterised by vibrant colours and youthful exuberance it also remained a profoundly conservative time for most of America. Given the …
Film Review: Mug
Polish cinema finds itself in a very strange place at the moment. On the one hand, there are film-makers such as Pawel Pawlikowski, who with Ida and Cold War has produced two of the best European films of the last decade. Conversely, there has been a noticeable level of mainstream success from homegrown cinema of …
Film Review: Await Further Instructions
You probably fall into one of two groups. There are those of us who implicitly place their trust in authority and would rather defer decisions to the state or government. Then there are others who wouldn’t trust those in charge as far as they can throw them. Whilst it’s normally the older generation which tend …
Film Review: The Image Book
When it comes to grumpy old men, there are few who can claim to be in the same league as the famed Gallic curmudgeon Jean-Luc Godard. The French auteur has been grinding his teeth about cinema for decades now despite being one of the country’s most famous film aficionados. Films are apparently dead, yet he …