Tag: American cinema
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Remembering John Cazale.
James Dean, Heath Ledger, River Phoenix; actors we most prominently associate with dying young. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Steve McQueen and James Gandolfini; others who died not particularly young, but certainly too soon. Yet, for me there is one actor who stands above them all, if not for his near-perfect body of work but purely for…
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Hereditary.
Following the death of her estranged mother, Toni Collette’s Annie secretly attends grievance support groups, where she describes her mother as manipulative, secretive and barely her mother by the end. Despite the distance and bad blood between them, Annie and her family quickly find the death of their matriarch starts to unravel the family dynamics…
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Tully.
Three years after an astonishing feature debut – Juno – writer Diablo Cody gave us the criminally underrated Young Adult in 2011. The story of a high school princess struggling to find value at life in her early thirties after realising she may have just peaked at prom queen. The film’s blunt, cynical writing was excelled to even greater…
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You Were Never Really Here.
United once again with astounding composer Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead), director Lynne Ramsay returns with You Were Never Really Here, a murky tale of regret, revenge and redemption. Despite being temporarily attached to several projects, this is Ramsay’s first time in the director’s chair in six years, following up her astonishing adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel We…
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Weinstein: Hollywood’s Manipulative Elephant in the Hotel Room.
Actor, Rose McGowan – accuses Weinstein of rape. I sign off every entry here with a line that refers to a ‘beloved film industry’ but today that’s hard to write. Following the brave statements and revelations from a small number of actresses, there is now a vast and seemingly endless stream of accusations emerging against…
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Patti Cake$
It’s been a really strong few months for directorial debuts with the likes of Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River and Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country. There is also Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$ to throw into the mix – a boisterous, expressive tale of aspiration to escape the hand one is dealt. Patricia works nights in a boozy karaoke bar,…
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The Big Sick.
From Jenny Slate’s desperately underrated Obvious Child to the wit and woe of The Skeleton Twins, American indie cinema has had a lot to say about modern romance in recent years. With the huge success of Aziz Ansari’s hit Netflix series Master of None and more recently the deeply cynical comical tragedy Friends from College, we find ourselves in a new…
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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
Ana Lili Amirpour’s directorial debut feeds on an array of different influences and inspirations whilst experimenting with style and tone. Its playfulness is counteracted by its gothic undertones. Based on the director’s own graphic novel and described by her as “the first Iranian vampire spaghetti western”, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has individuality…
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Inherent Vice.
What makes a good movie? Perhaps the more appropriate question is who gets to dictate what is or isn’t a good movie? You can jokingly sort films into amusing categories such as “guilty pleasures” or “childhood favourites” – we do this as a way of justifying why we like a movie if it doesn’t typically…
Hannah McHaffie 