Film Reviews

Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP A lot has changed since Terminator 2 was first in cinemas. The channel tunnel opened, Friends had its first and last episode, James Cameron went on to make the two highest grossing films of all time, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected as Governor of California twice. With every re-release it’s natural to wonder if the film will have the same effect all those years later and this is no exception. Set in 1995, Terminator 2 follows...

By James Mackney Spider-Man: Homecoming signals the second attempt by Sony Pictures to re-boot the Spiderman franchise in 15 years. I admit to feeing somewhat exhausted by the franchise, having seen all bar one of the Spider-Man films, and this latest instalment in the line-up left me cold and frustrated. Spider-Man: Homecoming has attempted to be a Superhero film as if it were directed by John Hughes. Sadly, there is none of the playfulness of The Breakfast Club nor is...

Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP A Ghost Story follows Casey Affleck, an independent musician, and his wife Rooney Mara who live together in a small suburban house. They have an ordinary life and are a very normal couple until one day Affleck is killed in a car crash outside their home. While lying dead in hospital Affleck rises from a clinic bed and walks out underneath a bed sheet. After Mara moves out of the house, the ghost is left to...

By Wyndham Hacket Pain It may seem unfair to compare every new racing documentary to Asif Kapadia’s Senna, but since its 2011 release there have been a number of films that have covered the sport. Rush, Lauda: The Untold Story, 1, and Senna vs Brundle have all to a certain degree tried to recapture both the heart-pounding thrills and emotion of Kapadia’s film. The latest Formula One documentary Williams does cover a similar subject area but instead focuses on a...

By Michael McNulty Gareth Tunley’s debut feature, The Ghoul, is a brooding, atmospheric psychological thriller. Blending a dreamlike, occult narrative with suburban noir, Tunely, a Ben Wheatley regular, has made a film that feels part Kill List, with a smattering of Taxi Driver and a Lynch-ian twist. Chris (Tom Meeten), a homicide detective, is called down to London to investigate a mysterious double murder. The two killed are said, by forensic experts, to have continued to approach their killer after...

By Wyndham Hacket Pain  Maud Lewis remains one of Canada’s best known folk artists. Despite suffering from rheumatoid arthritis that restricted her movement she still managed to produce her much loved paintings. At one point her fame grew to the extent that she was featured in magazines and on television, and even sold a painting to the then Vice-President Richard Nixon. Maudie opens in provincial Nova Scotia during the 1930s, where Maud Dowley (Sally Hawkins) is frustrated at the lack of...

By Wyndham Hacket Pain  Stories about the Second World War are so ingrained in our minds and daily practice that it can seem as if there is nothing to add to the discourse of this period. As a result, it is always a pleasure for a story to separate itself from the pantheon of films, books, and tales that have tried to cover the period before and perhaps even more exciting when someone tries to challenge the preconceptions we have about...

Dunkirk is almost a silent film. Dunkirk is a film that is a master class in the art of ‘show it, don’t say it’. Dunkirk, demands that you feel like you are on the front line with the soldiers. The audience is used as another stranded Tommy on the beach, forming an orderly queue, waiting to be rescued. Dunkirk is an unapologetically British film. There isn’t an ancillary, and unnecessary, tale of love and romance to "cheer up", and degrade...

A group of shady individuals accumulate in an abandoned Boston warehouse to size up and complete an arms deal. However, when some bad blood infiltrates the proceedings, the deal swiftly falls south, and the guns which were going to be used for other nefarious purposes are now being utilised a little earlier than expected. That’s it. Looking for anything else? You’re in the wrong place. Free Fire isn’t a film of complexity. There’s not that much to it. But there’s...