Film

By Stephen Mayne  @finalreel In a world awash with adaptations of young adult dystopian fiction, The Hunger Games series still towers above its brethren. The first two outings were fresh and thrilling experiences, full of colour, action and the newly minted star power of Jennifer Lawrence. She remains the chief attraction, just as her character Katniss Everdeen seems to hold the fate of Panem in her palm, but the youthful charm is wearing off. Hampered by the commercially astute and...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Eight years from inception to completion but The Tale of The Princess Kaguya has been worth the wait. Isao Takhata’s swansong, an adaption of an ancient Japanese folktale, is a nuanced tale with added spiritual dimensions. Springing from a bamboo shoot, growing at an exponential rate, Studio Ghibli offers the viewer a Princess it’s hard not to fall in love with. Princess Kaguya progresses from adorable baby to strong-willed teenager within the space of a year. But...

By Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada Diane, a single mother picks up her teenage son Steve from a care facility for young people with behavioural difficulties. It is the last one in a series of similar institutions. This time he is expelled for starting a fire in the cafeteria, and everyone but his mother seems to have given up on him. His regular violent outbursts, provocative behaviour and hyperactivity have only increased since the death of his father three years earlier. But...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel We let millions of the furry little creatures into our homes, and the internet adores them. Yet put a cat next to a dog on screen and suddenly they become the villain. That’s certainly how Jerry Hickfang sees it in Marjane Satrapi’s unevenly energetic black comedy. Prone to conversations with imaginary voices, his friendly dog Bosco gees him up while cat Mr. Whiskers urges killing sprees in a Scottish accent. The Voices certainly does its own...

By Ellery Nick The jibes had already been circulating that after resurrecting Liam Neeson for 2008’s Taken, director Pierre Morel was once again embroiled in the dark arts - having dug up a new middle-aged cadaver to be put to good use in the bone-crunching world of international espionage and quickly assembled guns. The other question was how would a political animal such a Sean Penn fair in the physically precarious world of an action thriller? We need not have...

 By Stephen Mayne @finalreel  finalreel.co.uk Come on people, by now it must be clear that threatening Liam Neeson’s fictional family cannot end well. For Neeson - part-time actor, full-time avenger - does not take kindly to guns pointed in the general direction of his children. Or knives, blunt instruments, mean words and angry looks. Teaming up with director Jaume Collet-Serra for the third time (Unknown & Non-Stop) on Run All Night, his decrepit hitman cleaves dogmatically to cliché in a...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Who knew a film about maths could be so entertaining? Inspired by his 2007 documentary Beautiful Young Minds director Morgan Matthews and writer James Graham’s X + Y is a very funny, sweet yet unsentimental drama centred on the surprisingly fascinating, (and hardcore), world of a Mathematics Olympiad. As “geek-cool” continues to spread X + Y is a bracingly realistic portrait of what it’s genuinely like to be on the outside. Asa Butterfiled is spot on...

By Sam Inglis  @24fpsUK  24fps.org.uk Catch Me Daddy begins slowly, drawing a portrait of separate lives, all of which seem to be lived on the margins of society. As the first half hour runs on we see that we're following two sides of a story; a criminal gang and the two teenagers they are looking for. Initially I assumed that what had got Laila (Sameena Jabeen Ahmed) and Aaron (Connor McCarron) in trouble was some kind of debt, but it...

By Anna Power @TLE_Film '71 is a darkly disturbing, intensely evocative, riveting portrayal of a young soldier's experience of war, in the bitterest of conflicts, that of the Northern Ireland troubles. Jack O'Connell (Starred Up) is rapidly emerging as the actor of his generation with his elliptical, highly emotive performance as private Gary Hook, an army new recruit from small town Derbyshire. From children's home to army barracks, his first posting sees his troop rerouted to Belfast due to increasing...