Film Reviews

By Wyndham Hacket Pain “At that time your show was the most important show in the world,” Nas proclaims of The Strech Armstrong and Bobbito Show, which transmitted weekly between 1 am to 5 am on the college radio station WKCR. Interest in the programme reached such heights in the 1990's that there was a black market of bootlegged radio records that went across the USA and the broadcast was even referenced in the Wu-Tang Clan’s iconic song C.R.E.A.M. The...

By Linda Marric @Linda_Marric Fresh from the highly acclaimed Love Is Strange, Ira Sachs is back with a new production which deals with similar themes of New York real Estate and its devastating effects on human relations. Little Men tells the story of how the gentrification of a formally working class neighbourhood scuppers the burgeoning friendship between two adolescent boys who’s families become embroiled in a bitter rent dispute. Sensitive, introvert Jake (Theo Taplitz) and son of latin American immigrants...

By Anna Power Tom Ford’s long awaited follow up to A Single Man is a tale of heartbreak and revenge on an epic scale. Opulent, toxic and devastatingly dark, Nocturnal Animals’ double narrative unfurls with the slow-drip bitterness of the broken enmeshed with Ford’s mesmerising style, underpinned with a caustic derision of wealth and meaningless materialism. Based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony and Susan, the film opens in the lavish world of art gallery owner Susan Morrow, played brilliantly...

Review by Leslie Byron Pitt/@Afrofilmviewer When Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson original left the WWE to become a movie star, it was easy to see him as a star in the same vein as Arnold Schwarzenegger: A heavyweight presence who may not have a decent set of thespian chops, and would do little else but wield large firearms with remarkable ease and walk away from explosions like the coolest guy around. Looking back at Johnson’s Career now that he’s been branded...

By Anna Power Based on the graphic novel by Raymond Briggs, Ethel and Ernest is a love song to his parents, to working class values and to a uniquely English way of life that belonged to a time now gone forever. Touching and deeply personal, the film follows the couple through their courtship in the 1920’s to their deaths in the 1970’s, with a backdrop of the tumultuous and rapidly transmogrifying twentieth century piercing through their suburban ebb and flow...

By Leslie Byron Pitt/@Afrofilmviewer A recreational documentary in a similar vein to The Arbour (2010) or Dreams of a Life (2011), Notes on Blindness details us of the grand upheaval taken of famed academic John Hull as he loses his sight days after the birth of his first son. Directors James Spinney, Peter Middleton carefully craft a delicate series of vignettes in which we are informed of Hull’s frank dealings with losing his sight. We trace Hull recruiting a team...

No stranger to controversy, Oliver Stone continues his exploration of personal conflict enmeshed with the political, in his latest film Snowden. Bringing fresh perspective on Edward Snowden - the man, and his whistleblowing on covert civilian data monitoring by the NSA (National Security Agency), the film casts a paranoiac shadow over labyrinthine, secretive government operations resulting in a tense, dramatisation of events. Building on Laura Poitras Oscar winning documentary Citizenfour, the film starts at the now infamous rendezvous at the...

Have you ever seen a film in which an excessively flatulent corpse falls in love? Unless you've already seen Swiss Army Man, I'm guessing you won't have done. It's almost as if someone in Hollywood has actually been listening to everyone complaining, “Every film is a sequel! There's nothing original anymore! Stop remaking things that are already good!”. At the absolute most you could compare Swiss Army Man to Castaway, in so much as it does involve a castaway. And...

“I’m not the girl I used to be - I think people can see that on my face,” confesses Emily Blunt’s character, Rachel, in the opening scene of The Girl on The Train. Finally, Paula Hawkins’ bestselling thriller has transferred to our screens - and it doesn’t disappoint. Refreshingly, the plot stays faithful to the book - bar ditching London for New York as the location. Rachel is the alcoholic narrator who is obsessed with her ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux)...