Film Reviews

Taking seven days to shoot and incorporating 78 camera setups and 52 cuts, the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is one of the most memorable and iconic sequences in cinematic history. In 78/52 director Alexandre O. Philippe looks behind the curtain of Hitchcock’s most famous murder. Joining him is an impressive ensemble of directors, editors, actors, and film historians that includes Bret Easton Ellis, Peter Bogdanovich, Jamie Lee Curtis, Elijah Wood, and Guillermo de Toro. Each has their own different experience encountering Psycho and each...

By Jim Mackney Nearly forty years have passed since The Shining was first released in 1980. It was Stanley Kubrick’s only proper foray into horror but it can be said that many of his films, A Clockwork Orange for example, have heavily flirted with the genre. This Halloween the film is being rereleased in glorious 4K! Is it worth the admission price, after nearly forty years? The honest answer to this lies somewhere in the unhelpful, no mans land of...

By Michael McNulty Joachim Trier’s latest cinematic instalment, Thelma, is a veritable melting pot of genres.  Part coming of age romance, supernatural mystery-thriller and straight family drama.  This is a dizzyingly tense, low-key film and a subtlety poignant observation on sexuality and repressed desire that wraps itself around you and squeezes. The young, attractive Thelma (Eili Harboe) has moved to Oslo for university.  Away from home for the first time, she is tentatively taking her first steps into a world...

By Anna Power Opening this year’s London Film Festival,  Andy Serkis’ directorial debut, a biopic of Robin Cavendish, a polio survivor and lifelong disability rights campaigner and with Jonathan Cavendish – Robin’s son, as Producer. Despite a syrupy start, wherein the couple meet and idyllically fall in love at first sight at a cricket match, the film turns towards tragedy when Robin is struck down with polio whilst working as a tea broker in Kenya leaving him paralysed and unable...

It is fair to say that Brawl in Cell Block 99 delivers on its title. It’s the kind of film that makes you feel like a bad person for liking it. Set in the Sothern states of the USA, the film opens with Bradley Thomas (Vince Vaughn) losing his job as a tow truck driver. He goes home to find that his wife Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter) has been having an affair. After deciding to forgive her, he promises her a...

Winner of this year’s Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, Dina follows its title character as she prepares to get married to her fiancé Scott, who works as a greeter at Walmart. They are both on the autism spectrum and each struggle with it in different ways. For the most part, though, they lead fairly normal lives. Scott enjoys rock music and Dina has a liking for the Kardashians. As the film progresses we learn about the hardships that Dina...

Many of us, including myself, have visited tribal villages while on holiday to an African country. It is a fairly normal activity and the kind of display that opens I Am Not a Witch. So called witches are penned within a primitive Zambian settlement and are tied to ribbons to prevent them from leaving, while a guide tells tourists about their customs and beliefs. Elsewhere a young girl called Shula (Maggie Mulubwa) is blamed for suspicious activity and is accused...

On the surface The Snowman looks like one of those films that could only be good. With an acclaimed director, a strong cast, interesting source material, and even Martin Scorsese in an executive producer role, what could possibly go wrong? Based on the novel by Jo Nesbø of the same name, the film follows detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) as he investigates the disappearance of a woman whose scarf is found wrapped around a sinister-looking snowman near her home. He...

By Michael McNulty Boy, Taika Waititi’s sophomore feature, before collaboration with Jermaine Clement on What We Do in the Shadows secured him as co-creator of the best vampire mockumentary of all time and last year’s success with Hunt for the Wilderpeople put him at the helm of Marvel’s latest Thor instalment, is a coming of age story as playful and funny as it is tender and sad. Set in the tribal lands of the Te Whanau-A-Apanui, in the Bay of...