Film

Faces Places has a brilliantly simple premise. The film follows photographer JR and legendary film director Agnès Varda as they travel to small French towns and photograph the people they find there. The photos they take are in turn used to create large murals which are plastered onto nearby buildings. Through doing this JR and Varda speak to members of the local communities and learn about their lives and what makes these places tick. They are able to seek out fellow eccentrics and their conversations can be both bizarre and insightful....

In A Simple Favor, director Paul Feig offers a riotously funny, stylish and beautifully well observed Gone Girl-esque mystery thriller which somehow manages to be funnier and far more engaging than it has any right to be. Adapted by Jessica Sharzer form Darcey Bell's 2017 novel of the same name, the film mixes brilliantly acerbic one-liners and an impeccable visual style to tell a cleverly thought-out story of mystery and intrigue. And if that wasn’t enough, we are also treated to two fantastic performances courtesy of...

The 1930s Art Deco Royalty Cinema in Birmingham has been destroyed by fire

But her pet spaniel Mia can only manage second place

I was born in 1981 and while I was a fan in my childhood, I came of age as a movie nerd in the mid-90s. At a certain time, as far as I was concerned, Quentin Tarantino may as well have invented cinema. It wasn’t just his movies (though they were impossibly cool, all the more so because my friends and I weren’t old enough to watch them), it was Tarantino himself. The video store clerk who got his film...

Frances (Hazel Doupe) is from a traditional traveller family, and she’s always been a fighter. When she was nine, her pregnant mother was accidentally killed in a fight between the Garda and Frances’ dad Michael (Dara Devaney). In 1972 Frances is fifteen and even more determined to fight her own battles, despite her Dad’s insistence that it is men who should do the hitting for, and sometimes to, women. Fresh out of prison, Michael skips bail and goes on the...

Retrospekt is a drama from director Esther Rots, which comes nearly 10 years after her 2009 debut, Can Go Through Skin. The plot follows, Mette (Circé Lethem) a social worker who specialises in supporting female victims of domestic abuse, and her descent into danger by getting too close to a case she is handling. The action is told through a non-linear narrative that relies heavily on flashbacks and flash-forwards creating the sense that the film is an elaborate but horrifying jigsaw puzzle....

After decades spent in mostly supporting roles, legendry American actor Harry Dean Stanton reminds us of his talents in the low-key but thoughtful Lucky. 30 years on from Paris, Texas, which propelled Stanton to fame, he once again finds himself in the American desert in his final screen role before his death almost exactly a year ago. Known simply by his old nickname Lucky, Stanton plays an elder man at ease with life and comfortable with his daily routine. Each day he...

After a horrific accident at a rodeo competition, Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) must deal with his brain injuries and a life of mediocrity in rural South Dakota. I had the pleasure of speaking with Brady Jandreau prior to seeing The Rider, and it was a relief that director and writer Chloé Zhao was able to bring his humility and authenticity to the screen. Jandreau gives a powerful performance in this dedicated character study, which often so closely reflects his own affinity with...