Film

 By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Jules Avery’s Son of a Gun is heavy on plot twists and pseudo-intellectual chess theory but disappointingly short on character development and depth. The film has an interesting enough heist-plot but only really gives us the characters barebones meaning that we care little about their various entangled fates. Ewan McGregor does what he can with the skimpy dialogue he’s allotted but considering he’s supposed to be playing some sort of ballsy, criminal mastermind, at one point...

By Sam Inglis  @24FPSUK  24fps.org.uk Beyond Clueless is not a documentary, rather it's an example of something that has lately become fashionable in film criticism; the video essay. Writer/director Charlie Lyne uses clips from every mid 90's to mid 00's teen movie you can think of (and several you can't) alongside narration, read by The Craft's Fairuza Balk, to advance his theories about how they depict teens and high school. Before I get into this review I should say I...

 By Stephen Mayne @finalreel  thefinalreel.co.uk  Your name’s Larry Sportello but they call you Doc. You live by the Californian beach in a community shrinking by the day. Work is for suckers but you do it from time to time. In the PI game you’re a pro, or at least you know enough to say you are. Really, you’re just high; often and always. Except your heart’s broken and not fixing fast. And then she walks in again with a job....

By Clarisse Loughrey  @Clarisselou  The cultural consensus has been slowly letting the bar drop on rom-coms for years now. In some strange parallel to Two Night Stand’s own recently dumped lead, whose all-consuming sexual frustration leads her to pursue the very first dude who doesn’t reply to her online dating messages with “sup girl?”, the very existence of a rom-com which doesn’t come across as outwardly offensive to our core ideals somehow feels like a cinematic triumph. That is to...

By Sam Inglis  @24FPSUK  24fps.org.uk I never met my great grandfather, he died some years before I was born, but watching I'm Alright Jack I wished I could have seen it or at least discussed it with him, because I'm sure it would have struck a chord with him. In some ways it did with me, but in other ways it has definitely become dated over the 56 years since its release. Set in the early 50's, before Britain had...

 By Stephen Mayne @finalreel It seems we are firmly in the season of Alan Turing. But while Benedict Cumberbatch is off picking up awards for his imitation of the man, Alex Garland’s directorial debut is interested in the ideas. Taking the famous Turing test that sets out what a machine has to do to demonstrate consciousness, Garland’s paranoid slice of future phobia is a slick and engaging thriller that can’t quite reach the cerebral heights it shoots for. Garland is...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Funeral-speech writer Paul (Stephane Guillon) in Vincent Lannoo’s dark comedy Paper Souls (Les Ames De Papier) brings to mind Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Like Olivia Paul is consumed by grief and as such has chosen to cloister himself away, shutting himself off from any sort of romantic interest. Since the death of his wife five years prior Paul’s socialisation it seems has been limited to his next door neighbour and best friend the cantankerous archivist...

By Darryl Griffiths @legallyBOD  'There are no two words more harmful in the English language than good job.' Regardless of our chosen fields, many of us have been exposed to the idea of a 'mentor' as we strive to reach the pinnacle of our professions. Guiding us. Driving us. Some, heavy on sentimentality as they nurture. Others, toeing the line between firm and fair. Finally, we have the morally questionable drill sergeants, brimming with squirm-inducing bile that rings and sporadically...

By Emma Silverthorn  @HouseOf_Gazelle Like Joanna Hogg’s first two feature films Exhibition (2013) is a spot-on meditation focused on British middle-class mores. However this time, instead of sending her characters on holiday, she shows them within their natural environment. Their home-an ultra modernist design by architect James Melvin to whom the film is dedicated-is as the director says, ‘very much the third character in the story.’ But after twenty years of living within this unique creation artistic couple D-played by...