Film

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Kim Longinotto's documentary Dreamcatcher has I suspect used up my full years supply of tears. Longinotto is an almost entirely silent presence behind the camera, which feels right for the stories she documents; giving, ex-prostitute and current Dreamcatcher Foundation advocate Brenda Myers-Powell, as well as the numerous women Brenda supports, the space to tell their own stories. The Dreamcatcher Foundation, as their site states fights to end human sex trafficking in Chicago. And the stories told...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle I haven’t laughed so much at a movie since Withnail and I. Not that Appropriate Behaviour is exactly of Withnail’s ilk, it is as the elevator pitch goes: a mix between Frances Ha and Annie Hall. Yet the realistic hilarity and absurdity of the characters struggles are that of Withnail’s, (very high), standard. Like contemporaries Lena Dunham and Miranda July, Desiree Akhavan’s art is of the personal-to-the- point-of-over-sharing kind, and Dunham is unsurprisingly already a big...

A list of the top 15 greatest ever TV shows has been compiled by Sky Atlantic with Breaking Bad and the Big Bang Theory both landing in the top 5.  It seems we could be living in a second Golden Age of television with eight of the top 15 TV shows made in the past ten years. Along with Breaking Bad and the Big Bang Theory, Game of Thrones landed in seventh place beating time-honoured British classic Doctor Who, which finished...

By Anna Power @TLE_Film The Imitation Game comes to Blu-ray and DVD from 9th March, 2015, courtesy of StudioCanal. See below to win a copy on Blu Ray. A simple story about a complicated man, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), the Cambridge mathematician whose unquantifiable contribution to the decoding of Enigma, is a story previously unheralded on screen before The Imitation Game. Based on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, the film faithfully portrays the complexity of Turing’s...

By Anna Power Pride is a funny, heartwarming, celebratory film about the real-life union between gay rights campaigners in London and striking Welsh miners. Set in the 80’s, depicting a time when the harsh policies of Margaret Thatcher’s government made insurgents out of the least likely, crossing societal divisions of class, race, gender and sexual identity, when politically the only side to be on was - any side but Thatcher’s side. Throw into the mix a stonking 80’s soundtrack (The...

By Sam Inglis   @24fpsUK  24fps.org.uk Gregg Araki started off as a true underground figure, making distinctive and divisive films like The Living End and his 'teen apocalypse' trilogy. Over the past decade, however, he seems to have been trying to square his auteurism and his favoured topics with at least some level of commercial appeal. Some films, like Mysterious Skin and Kaboom veer more towards his auteurist side, while Smiley Face was an unabashed tilt at the mainstream. White...

By Emma Silverthorn  @HouseOf_Gazelle Feature-film A Dark Reflection was inspired by the research for a potential sequel to the 2007 documentaryWelcome Aboard Toxic Airlines and perhaps director Tristan Loraine should have stuck to documentaries. On a political level I feel strongly that this is an important film but artistically it left me cold. Personally I was glad to see the little known issue of the potential damage that organophosphates can cause exposed. It’s not a very sexy topic but the...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Kornel Mundruczo’s feature White God can’t really be done justice in conversation, as I’ve realised this week raving to friends about a film that follows an army of dogs as they take over a Hungarian city! But White God is an exceptional film. It’s many things depending on your view point, an animal rights film, a comment on the current political situation in Hungary; one that is easily extrapolated to other parts of the world, (the...

Corrina Antrobus @corrinacorrina A best selling weepy with a critically acclaimed cast? No wonder there's an Oscar whiff about the theatrical adaptation of Lisa Genova's book Still Alice. This $5m to make movie entered Toronto Film Festival with no distribution ties and left with the wet ink of Sony Pictures Classics (and not a dry eye in the house). This is no drama, it's more of a horror story for anyone with a bird brain. Ever forgotten to put the...