Film

I was always a movie guy. We had consoles (a Sega Master System, followed by a Mega Drive) in the house and I did play them, and some PC games, when I was a kid, but gaming was my brother’s thing. Despite that, and despite the fact we never had a Nintendo console, I was very well aware of the Mario Brothers. I had played the games only briefly (and badly) at friends houses, but I knew Mario (played by...

In a colonial-era South America, bureaucrat Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) is trapped in Asunción, continuously rejected transfer by his bosses. In an attempt to break out of his Kafkaesque existence Zama takes part in a dangerous mission to capture bandit Vicuña Porto (Matheus Nachtergaele), on the promise of freedom and glory if he succeeds. In spite of the stifling surrounds closing Zama in, this is a film that can leave a viewer cold. There is a clear...

Sheila Hancock plays the eponymous, Edie in this drab and slow moving film about a woman slowly moving. We see Edie in the first instance as a carer for her frail, elderly husband, George who seems to be nearly completely incapacitated. Her life as we first see it appears to be draining, lacking joy and not filled with the traditional things a potential Grandparents’ life should be filled with such as laughter, fun and love and it is a bleak...

At the beginning of This is Congo a solider says that according to God’s will growing up in the Congo is paradise, but according to man’s will it is misery. The Congo is indeed a beautiful country and this can clearly be seen in the luscious green landscapes of director Daniel McCabe’s documentary. Conflict has engulfed The Congo for more than 20 years with rebel forces constantly at war with the government. Of the 50 rebel groups that can be...

Perhaps one of the most inspiring things about Nora Twomey's Oscar nominated first feature animation The Breadwinner is how female it is in it all its aspects. Adapted from Canadian writer Deborah Ellis’s best selling Young Adult novel of the same name, and executive produced by Angelina Jolie, the film offers one of the most heartening stories you are likely to come across this year, and is further elevated by the simplicity of the means used to tell it. The...

“The stairs to our industry must be accessible to all,” declared Cate Blanchett as she stood on the steps of the Cannes Palais during the premiere for Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun. Below her stood 81 other woman from within the industry, representative of the number of female filmmakers who had walked that red carpet to see their film play in the Official Cannes Competition over the course of the festival’s 71-year history. By contrast, some 1645 men have...

I met Director Nora Twomey and lead actress Saara Chaudry to discuss The Breadwinner, an animation film set in Afghanistan under the Taliban, where 11 year old Parvana is forced to dress like a boy in order to work to support her family after her father is arrested. When did you first come across the story and what attracted you to the idea of making it into an animation film? NT: in 2013 my partners brought home the book from...

In 1993, Sylvester Stallone was going through, shall we say, a challenging period. He’d had a few box office disappointments. The Rocky series seemed to have played itself out with 1990’s poorly received fifth entry, and Stallone had attempted to shift into comedy, making disastrous choices in Oscar and Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot! The latter is one of Hollywood’s great practical jokes, as Stallone’s longtime box office rival Arnold Schwarzenegger pretended to be interested in making the film...

If someone had told me two weeks ago that the best film I would see at this year’s Cannes Film Festival would be a garish, blood-soaked exploitation thriller starring Nic Cage, I probably would have snorted at you with the sort of jeering derision reserved almost exclusively for certain members of the Cannes press corp. And yet, here we are. Directed by Canadian-Italian filmmaker Panos Cosmatos, this blistering rock ballad of a movie is the sort of euphoric cinema experience...