Film

Happy Death Day 2 UDir: Christopher LandonIt would take only two words to sum up the concept of the first Happy Death Day: “Groundhog Slay”. Taking the time looping concept of the classic Bill Murray comedy and applying it to a homage to post Scream comedy inflected 90s slashers, the initial entry in this now newly minted franchise was warmly received and a sleeper hit. For me, while it had going for it a versatile and highly entertaining final girl...

With the Oscars just hours away we thought we'd hit film buffs with this enticing quiz to see how well you really know the prestige event. The Favourite, Vice, Free Solo and Mary Queen of Scots are all up for gongs at this year's awards in what is expected to be one of the most hotly contested ever. But do you know your Casablanca from your Gone With The Wind, your Titanic from your Inception? Take the quiz below to...

Liam Neeson may have blighted his career with the admittance of his “rape revenge” anecdote and in truth, it does sour the viewing of Cold Pursuit, a film with a plot built near solely on revenge… The Norwegian Hans Peter Moland directs ‘Cold Pursuit’, remaking his own 2014 film In Order of Disappearance. Cold Pursuit follows Neeson’s, Nels Coxman, a snowplow driver and upstanding member of the remote community living in Kehoe, Colorado. Tragedy strikes the Coxman family when Nels’...

Steven Soderbergh’s Netflix movie High Flying Bird is a sharp and layered drama set in Manhattan during a six-month lockout between the NBA and the players. The season’s come to a standstill and no one’s getting paid. Hotshot sports agent Ray Burke (Andre Holland) and his number one client, Erick (Melvin Gregg) are stuck in limbo as the lockout has completely neutralised their income. These are people who are used to seeing huge money rolling in, so now their daily...

The best thing that can be said about Happy Death Day 2U is that it does what it says on the tin: a few jump scares, some unconvincing romantic subplots and enough cliches to make it palatable for a 'what not to' class at any film school. Still, no-one in the audience around me seemed to expect anything different, except for the one or two walk-outs. A sequel to 2017's Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day 2U follows a number...

Stephen Frost is the founder of Frost Included, a company that has encouraged inclusion and diversity in the corporate world for companies including BP, McDonald’s and Microsoft. He’s now turning his decades of experience to addressing gender, race and sexuality disparities in the entertainment industry, working with production companies such as Kudos, known for Eastern Promises, Spooks and currently the Netflix show Troy: Fall of a City. Frost talks to Christopher Marchant about how the ‘whitewashing’ of history may be doing people of colour...

Dick Churchill was a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft III who escaped execution because he shared the Prime Minister’s surname

This series will attempt to look at the complete careers of directors, actors and other filmmakers. In looking at these filmographies, we will see the context in which they fit together, into an arc of a career and into the life of the subject. I knew I didn’t want to begin with a well known auteur on whom there is already a wealth of writing and a set opinion. I didn’t want someone with a filmography of intimidating size, so that...

Bird Box, Netflix’s new apocalyptic thriller, jumps between two timelines in an uncompromisingly dark narrative. Based on the 2014 novel by Josh Malerman, this adaption is stacked with talent and the premise seemed like a sure winner: it’s set around a mysterious force that compels people to commit suicide once they see it. The film works for a while, but unfortunately becomes undone by genre clichés and lapses in logic. Sandra Bullock stars as Malorie, an expectant mother who only...