Tag: Biopic
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Matangi / Maya / M.I.A.
A collaboration between old friends from art school, Matangi / Maya / M.I.A. is not your average music doc. Most obviously because the music career of Sri Lankan born and Brixton bred rapper M.I.A. is only one component in a film exploring her beginnings, her inspirations, her activism and her global success in the early 2000s…
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Whitney.
Nick Broomfield and Kevin Macdonald, both giants of the British documentary industry, have each explored the self-destructive life and intense global career of Whitney Houston. Almost exactly a year after Broomfield’s Whitney: Can I Be Me comes Macdonald’s simplistically entitled Whitney – this time signed off by Houston’s family and estate. Where Broomfield’s limited access meant he drew largely…
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I, Tonya.
Arguably the Britney Spears of competitive ice-skating, Tonya Harding was the controversial American world champion whose life and career were filled with controversy and conflict in the mid-nineties. Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya is proving an award season favourite, with both Margot Robbie and Allison Janney nominated for their performances as monstrous mother and deviant daughter. This is…
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Final Portrait.
I have made a recent effort to write more specifically about the work of women and people of colour, both behind and in front of the camera. A rather chaotic few days and a refurbishment at my local cinema left me with only a film by and about a white man to watch and review…
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Born to Be Blue.
By delicately and thoughtfully multi-layering fact over fiction, Robert Budreau’s Born to Be Blue is a beautifully textured, loose interpretation of jazz musician Chet Baker’s 1960s comeback. We first meet Baker on the floor of a damp Italian jail cell, withdrawing from heroine. Moments later, we’re in a world of fast pace black and white,…
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Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach.
When I was 17 I saw Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen. My introduction to cinematic realism, my mind was blown. In the months that followed I devoured Loach’s back catalogue and, for the first time, consciously sought out new and innovative films and genres that I’d never experienced. I was mesmerised by seeing a film where…
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Miles Ahead.
The title of Don Cheadle’s passion project refers to the innovation, revolution and originality found in the music and work of Miles Davis. You may have seen the main poster for the film which features Cheadle with his head down, sunglasses on, clasping his trumpet whilst a cigarette billows sexy smoke from his mouth. The…
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Black Mass.
Telling the story of the criminal rise of Boston kingpin James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, Black Mass struggles to ever really rise off of the ground. Following his movements and progressions within the South Boston underworld, we spend two decades with Bulger and the rest of the Winter Hill Gang. Everything is loosely told through the recollections of…
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Legend.
Famous for leading London’s East End underbelly for the best part of a decade, the Kray twins have been reasonably prominent in our nation’s cultural conscience ever since. Having already been resurrected for the purposes of the 1990 bio-flick, featuring Gary and Martin Kemp, the Krays once again appear before us in Brian Helgeland’s Legend,…
Hannah McHaffie 