Tag: film
-
The Miseducation of Cameron Post.
Adapted from Emily M. Danforth’s book, The Miseducation of Cameron Post is the second feature from director Desiree Akhavan. In 2014, Akhavan explored the complexities of a modern woman’s sexuality (simultaneously winning over indie film audiences) in Appropriate Behaviour – a film which refreshingly focused on bisexuality – more specifically in conflict with family heritage, culture and…
-
BlacKkKlansman
Spike Lee’s latest, loosely based on the early career of police-officer Ron Stallworth, opens with an icon scene from 1939’s Gone With the Wind. An iconic moment in American cinema, a distressed Scarlett O’Hara is wading through a sea of injured civil war soldiers. The camera gradually draws out, revealing the vast extent of the wounded.…
-
The Escape.
On the surface, Tara seems to have everything any mother and wife could ever want; two young children, an attentive husband, a beautiful house, two cars and financial security. With her husband earning enough money to support them both, Tara’s days are spent getting the children to and from the local primary school, tending to…
-
Apostasy.
Stern, tight-lipped mother and devoted Jehovah’s Witness Ivanna is raising her two teenage daughters within the strict, secular religion to which she has committed her life. Each daughter carries with them weighty doubts and when one sister falls away from the faith, Ivanna is faced with pressure to minimise contact with her in order to…
-
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…
-
Physical Film Collections, A Love Letter.
You can learn a lot about a person by snooping through their DVD collection. Whether it’s uncovering a shameful love of Steven Seagal movies or an unrealised obsession with Buster Keaton, beware, for one’s film collection can be the basis for a judgement of overall character. Personally, being a cinephile always went hand in hand…
-
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…
-
Mid-Year Round Up – 2018.
As the film industry continues to reel from the Weinstein scandal, 2018 has been a reasonably strong year for movies but more importantly a particularly loud and triumphant one for women and our ongoing activism for equality at all levels. So far my current favourite films of the year boast real variety and demonstrate particularly…
-
McQueen.
London bad boy turned fashion designer extraordinaire, Lee Alexander McQueen boldly conquered the world of fashion in his late twenties. His violent, dramatic designs earned him international acclaim and at the mere age of twenty-seven he found himself chief designer at Givenchy, remaining in the position for the following five years. In 2010, McQueen committed suicide…
-
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…
Hannah McHaffie 