Category: Film
-
My Favourite Films of 2017.
Taking a closer look, there’s an evident running theme of escape in my top ten films of 2017. Many of them centre around or involve physically trying to escape, emotionally trying to escape or attempting to flee from one’s self. As we face the daily reality of life filled with fake news, the threat of…
-
Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Twelve years since his impressive indie noir debut, Brick, Rian Johnson is now the man in the chair behind the second entry in the new Star Wars trilogy. Star Wars: The Last Jedi follows on almost immediately from where J.J.Abram’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens left us two years ago. The highly anticipated second instalment reintroduces us to the ongoing…
-
The Disaster Artist.
Since its release in 2003, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room has gained cult status, becoming a regular favourite among late night audience there to bathe in the absurdity of the whole affair. The stilted awkward delivery of a baffling script combined with the eccentricities of Wiseau’s central character, and a sprawling narrative that drifts from one incomplete story to…
-
Gaga: Five Foot Two.
I’ve been a longstanding Gaga fanatic since Fame Monster landed back in 2009, finding myself captivated by her angsty ballads such as Brown Eyes and Speechless. It was an album that defined my last long summer of freedom before heading off to university. When Born This Way arrived two years later I was once again won over by the mainstream singles, meanwhile falling…
-
Good Time.
The Safdie brothers shook me to my core in 2015 with their intoxicating character study, Heaven Knows What. Now they return with an equally raw and intense tale of delinquency on the fringes of society in downtrodden New York. Last time, their star was directly from the streets they were portraying, this time Robert Pattinson takes…
-
Mudbound.
Based on the 2008 novel, Mudbound is as close to literary as a film can get. A selection of characters tie the film together with their individual voice-over narration, dividing the film into natural chapters. Director Dee Rees’s second feature film is a stunning, harrowing tale of life in Mississippi for two men, following their return from…
-
An Open Letter to a Cinema Vaper.
To the man sat in E15 at last week’s 30th Anniversary screening of Predator: It’s an enjoyable thing, indulging in 1980’s nostalgia at the cinema, with Arnie’s biceps almost tearing through the screen, painfully dated humour and an array of excessively over the top characters delivering the naffest of lines – “I don’t have time to…
-
The Florida Project.
Sean Baker’s Tangerine exploded into cinemas several years ago, a feisty tale of a prostitute’s mission to seek revenge on her cheating partner and pimp. Shot entirely on an iPhone, the film was a conversation piece within DIY cinema and a demonstration of the vast capabilities of talented artists who perhaps don’t have the tech or cameras…
-
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami.
An intensely observational documentary, Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami is Sophie Fiennes’ ambitious exploration of the icon and the enigma that is Grace Jones. Combining striking stage performances with more intimate footage of Jones in hotel rooms, dressing rooms and in her native home of Jamaica, Sophie Fiennes’ bold approach to her equally bold subject creates a…
-
The Snowman.
Michael Fassbender’s Harry Hole is something of a mosaic of all the cliched film noir detectives that cinema has constructed and brought to our screens in the last century. Isolated by his alcoholism, he longs for a new case he can sink his teeth into; to distract him from his lost love and lonely existence.…
Hannah McHaffie 