Tag: film
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Hitchcock/Truffaut.
Hitchcock/Truffaut shares its names with a quintessential book for film-makers and film lovers alike. In 1962 Alfred Hitchcock was at the top of his game, his career at the beginning of its end. Two years earlier he had terrified audiences with Psycho and revolutionized the horror genre by essentially inventing ‘the slasher film’. Francois Truffaut’s…
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Bone Tomahawk.
S. Craig Zahler bursts onto the scene with his directorial début, Bone Tomahawk. Set in the old West, and centring around a rescue mission, lead by a determined and loyal Sheriff, this is a world of dust, blood and ego. When two citizens are kidnapped by a mysterious and threatening tribe, a devoted husband, an…
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Janis: Little Girl Blue.
If you look for this documentary under the image tab of the search engine of your choice, you will come across many a photographed portrait of Janis Joplin. Very little else emerges except perhaps the occasional film poster. This is somewhat reflective of Janis: Little Girl Blue, a film deeply concerned with image and painting…
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Deadpool.
At one point in Deadpool there is discussion and commentary over the poop emoji. For those to whom this is unfamiliar, it is just one of the many miniature images that many of us now send to each other, via our smart phones, in the place of dialogue and verbal communication. The emoji in question is…
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Trumbo.
Since the film industry was heinously targeted in the 1950s by Joseph McCarthy and his communist witch hunts, it seems only natural that we would make films about it. The latest in this long line of Hollywood blacklist melodramas is Trumbo, directed by Jay Roach. Best known for bringing us the Austin Powers trilogy, Roach…
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Youth.
Returning from the tremendous success of The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino now bestows upon us the gift of Youth. Vacationing in the Alps with his daughter, a retired composer is invited to conduct his work, one last time – this time, for royalty. He firmly declines. Meanwhile his best friend, an ageing movie director, works…
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Spotlight.
Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight is surely set for Academy Award success. Brilliantly simple and expertly paced, this is the cinematic interpretation of a true story. In 2001, the Boston Globe stood up to the power of the catholic church when a small team of investigative journalists looked into a number of child molestation cases carried out by…
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Room.
Adapted from the novel by Emma Donoghue, Room is a startling story told predominantly through the eyes of Jack, a five year old who knows nothing of what lies on the other side of the four walls in which him and his mother are confined. Kidnapped seven years earlier, his mother Joy has made the decision…
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Directing Lancashire.
Having grown up in Lancashire, I did what so many others did – I moved away for University. After spending three years in Leeds and another in Edinburgh I returned home to my first graduate job in the arts, back in Preston. Such is the norm that those who’ve grown up in Lancashire feel the…
Hannah McHaffie 