Film

Reviewed by Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada The opening film of the Berlin Film Festival, is an unambiguous celebration of film - Joel and Ethan Coen take on Old Hollywood in their newest all-star comedy, Hail Caesar. Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a studio "fixer", runs from one emergency to the next in the chaotic world of the film business in the early 1950s, the later years of Hollywood's golden age. He gets the stars out of trouble, appeases irate directors, and keeps...

Review by Miranda Schiller/@mirandadadada   Enfant terrible of French Cinema, driving force of the Film Noir and Nouvelle Vague movements, Godard is the name you drop when wanting to appear knowledgeable and Europhile. And with good reason. Time to revisit (or discover) some of his most influential films in this newly released Blu Ray box set. It certainly gives an indication of Godard's bandwidth of themes and artistic expressions, from his most well-known, the iconic Breathless, to the gloomy dystopia Alphaville,...

Review by Adam Turner/@AdamTurnerPR Happy, uplifting and easy-watching Chronic is not. In fact, It's more like being drenched by a cannon loaded with misery. However, Michel Franco's melancholic drama does help to bring to attention some of life's most agonising realities - from cancer and HIV to euthanasia, death and everything in between. Franco, best known for the disturbing After Lucia (2012), should be commended for bravely confronting such anxiety-provoking issues - many of which are seldom portrayed through the...

The Martian's space botany theme has been affirmed this week after US astronaut Scott Kelly confirmed that a zinnia plant had flowered on the International Space Station (ISS). Ridley Scott's film, due for UK release on February 8, is based on space botanist Mark Watney's incredible survival on Mars where he was able to grow and cultivate potatoes. And the concept may not be so far fetched after all. Commander Scott Kelly has announced on Twitter that the “first ever flower grown in space" has made its debut, adding:...

The most baffling aspect of the recent all white Oscars nominations was not the lack of ethnic minorities. That's par for the course thanks to the ageing, mostly white and male Academy voters. The really disturbing part was reaction from some online commentators, including journalists, who criticised the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag. A common complaint came from self-styled liberals, the kind of posing social justice warriors who claim to be “colour blind”. Apparently, criticising the world's most prominent awards show for failing...

by Miranda Hazrati/@mirandahazrati The UK has always produced a plethora of quality films which have captured the imaginations of audiences across the globe from iconic and cult films such as ‘Abigail’s Party’’  to box office smashes such as ‘The Theory Of Everything’, the UK film industry continues to thrive with UK actors and directors increasingly in demand. Here are ten of the best:    1 - Four Weddings And A Funeral The quintessential British film ‘Four Weddings and A Funeral’...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Tragically Alan Rickman,one of Britain's if not the world's favourite actors, has sadly passed away aged 69 of cancer. He was known for many works including roles in Harry Potter, Die hard and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, however he was also known for "serious" acting and was well respected by the acting community as well. A family statement read: "The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69....

Erwin Schrödinger was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist who, amongst other esteemed achievements, was most noted for his sympathies to the scientific layman. In an attempt to demystify the secrets of quantum physics, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and parallel universes he developed a theory named Schrödinger's cat, in which a cat in a closed box with a stick of dynamite (or radioactive source/ poison/ too much time - you pick) is considered (according to quantum mechanics) to be simultaneously both dead...

Pilou Asbæk & Tuva Novotny interviewed by Miranda Schiller/@mirandadadada War movies strive to obtain a sense of realism and immersion. Danish feature A War is no exception. With an exception of the leads, the cast is played by real danish soldiers who have been stationed in Afghanistan. Such a decision as not only helped provide its story a strong element of truth, but also helped establish the film with a certain amount of prestige. A War has been selected as the Danish...