Film Reviews

By Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada What would happen if a middle-class woman in London were pregnant with the second coming of Jesus via immaculate conception? If Debbie Tucker Green's The Second Coming is to be believed, nothing much. There'd be an argument with the husband, a best friend worrying about her mental condition, and the woman in question refusing to talk to anyone about it. A synopsis, in most cases, does not tell you the whole story of the film, it...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Kajaki is based on the true story of  a group of soldiers, who in 2006 whilst on a routine expedition of the Kajaki dam in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, stumbled right into a minefield. What followed in reality was five hours of hell as the men waited on rescuing helicopters. One by one the mines activated leaving seven of the men severely injured, (blown off limbs and punctured lungs), whilst the remaining uninjured men attempted to calm...

By Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada Monet, Renoir, Cézanne – today, these painters' and their fellow Impressionists' works are as ubiquitous and well-known as it gets, adorning calendars, mugs and coasters. But of course at the time these young artists started painting in their now recognizable style, they caused quite the stir in the art world and were seen as an abomination by the establishment. Their transformation into respectable artists was not least due to the art collector and dealer Paul Durand-Ruel....

By Ellery Nick @Ellery_Nick James corrects his older brother, ‘It’s not Jimmy anymore, its James.’ Reluctantly, Frankie accepts this and we take James’s point. He wants to be taken seriously. Frankie and Jimmy? This isn’t some toothpick-chewing bank robbery yarn set in the Big Easy after all. In American Heist, Hayden Christensen plays muscle-car driving James, who is less than thrilled about older brother Frankie’s return from prison after managing to pull his socks up and re-enter the civilised world...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Saved from triteness (just) by Al Pacino's utterly gratifiying, larger than life performance, Danny Collins takes as its springboard the story of folk musician Steve Tilston who received a letter from John Lennon thirty five years too late. In an interview with a music magazine Tilston had expressed some fear over the potentially corrupting power of the riches and fame integral to the rock-star trajectory.  Lennon took issue with this and wrote to then twenty one...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Referred to only as The Girl: here is a heroine you can root for, a vigilante, feminist, vampire with excellent taste in music plus skateboarding ability, yes please! Not that this heroine is overtly kick-ass; she's a quiet, lonely soul but if anything this makes her even more appealing. Even the basic fact of seeing a female, (and a vulnerable looking female at that), stalking the streets at night (as opposed to being stalked), was in...

By Stephen Mayne There are few subjects the world of art likes more than itself. Film is no exception, the history of cinema littered with hymns to the noble endeavour and exposés of a tragic, fame obsessed industry. Steering clear of both extremes, Clouds of Sils Maria plays out as a thoughtful backstage melodrama that trumpets the craft while taking sly digs at the commercialisation of the form and the vanity of the players. It helps that Director Olivier Assayas...

By Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada Somewhere in the fields of Norfolk, a boy gets off the school bus for the last time, leaving his scribbled-on uniform behind with the cheering boys at the back of the bus. It is the start of a long, hot summer, which this boy, nicknamed the Goob, spends mostly being worked to exhaustion and mistreated by his stepfather Gene. His mother runs a shabby burger bar, his stepfather grows beets, which allows him to play plantation...

By Leslie Byron Pitt If you have a quick glance at the IMDB page of Futuro Beach director Karim Aïnouz, you would find a substantial amount of award nominations. This includes Futuro Beach being selected for the Golden Bear prize at The Berlin Film Festival. However, after sitting through the beautiful yet vacuous 106 minutes of abstract visuals and bland melodrama, it’s difficult to see why. Opening with a vigorous opening sequence of vast areas of empty beach, overseen by...