Film

By Leigh Parsons @Cinimalist What We Do in the Shadows is a new mockumentary film about a group of vampires directed by and starring Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi. It is also a strong contender for the funniest film of the year. From its opening fake titles “The New Zealand Documentary Board” the tone of the film is set. Three old vampires, plus an ancient one, live in a flat share in Wellington and bicker about the...

By Anna Power, Film Editor @TLE_film Christopher Nolan fans will delight at the loopy, lustrous, pyrotechnic vision that is Interstellar but will the narrative hold up by comparison?   Set in the near future, in a period of post climate-change meltdown and pre-apocalyptic collapse, we find the inhabitants of Earth (those lucky enough to still be alive), surviving, all hands turned to farming in an attempt to cultivate soil that is well on its way to desertification. Dust storms are...

By Nick Figgis A seriously inconvenient truth, but it might be time we face it. Kuhn and Anderson's thrilling documentary is a rare gem in environmental film – it poses questions and actually answers them. I watched most of Cowspiracy muttering expletives under my breath. For a meat and dairy eater, whose girlfriend has been known to ask if I “want some toast with my butter,” it's an eye opener but not in the way you might expect. Fear not,...

By Anna Power @powersfilms Andrei Zvyagintsev's Leviathan is a tale of rot and corruption in modern day Russia that is as brittle and barren as the skeletal Whale carcass beached on the shore of this remote northwestern Russian town. Unforgiving and relentless, the film’s darkness is offset by exquisite raucous vodka-drenched banter of the kind that provokes laughter and blushes in equal measure. A rough re-working of the Old Testament’s Book of Job, it tells the story of Kolya (Alexei...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle On paper the trajectory of novelist Phillip’s career is every writers dream. With the publication of his second book Philip (Jason Schwartzman) is put on The New Yorker’s five under thirty five list, is taken under the wing of his literary idol Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce) and is offered unlimited residence at Zimmerman’s summerhouse retreat. The films premise lying in Philip’s strong desire to eschew toxic, urban life in order to find creative solitude and peace...

By Anna Power @powersfilms Following on from his success with Dallas Buyers Club Jean-Marc Vallee directs Wild, a tale of grief, hurt and healing, literally one step at a time. Reece Witherspoon gives a striking performance as novice, lone-hiker Cheryl Strayed (based on her memoir) who undertook the precipitous 1,100 mile journey through the wilderness as the ill-thought-through solution to a car-crash rock bottom, resulting in the breakdown of her marriage and subsequent divorce. Donning freshly pressed hiking trousers and...

By Anna Power @powersfilms  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 true genius and his immense tenacity and determination to do the impossible by building a machine to decode German communications, effectively shortening the war and...

By Alex Barrett Getting an independent film funded and made has always been, and probably always will be, extremely difficult. There's been much talk of the 'democratisation' of filmmaking and of how the digital 'revolution' has levelled the playing field, enabling films to be made quickly and cheaply. This is true to an extent, but it's also relative. For instance, £150,000 is considered, in filmmaking terms, a 'microbudget' – but while that might be next-to-nothing for a film budget, for...

By Anna Power @powersfilms '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...