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King Arthur: Legend of the Sword – Nah mate

The American reviews for King Arthur: Legend of the Sword came out last week. I try to aviod such things but the negative buzz was pretty overwhelming. ‘It can’t be that bad,’ I thought, ‘it’s a Guy Ritchie film. I like Guy Ritchie films.’
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The Levelling: Farm Life

The Levelling was shot on location in Somerset, which comes with the opportunity for me to swell up with pride. There ain’t too many films that explore our part of the world. Usually we’re just shipped to other places to ham up our accents and play the British equivalent of the yokel.
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Frantz: Love after the war

There’s something about wartime romance movies. Usually in this country it’s the Second World War. After some searching i found the last most recent one, the insipid 2004 joint Suite Française. A film, as they always are about the love affair between a French woman and this dashing Nazi officer. At least Ilsa, She Wolf…
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Miss Sloane: Anti-feminist empowerment

Let’s be frank here: at its best, Miss Sloane is a mid-tier, House of Cards level, sub-Sorkin-at-his-best tale of fictionalised (and mostly depoliticised) demi-ethical political manoeuvring and personal conduct.
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Alien: Covenant: A clumsy remix

Did you enjoy Alien? You know how Aliens took the approach of completely recontexualising the familiar iconography through the perspective of a different genre lens? What originally was a tension horror joint reinterpreted as military action, the very image of the xenomorph itself taking a completely different meaning through its multiplication. Difference of ten years…
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The Weekly Roundup: 14/05/17

Sundays are for wishing you had more time in your life for wild excess, instead you sit at home reading books under a blanket drinking a mug of caffeine free tea. Well, that and catching up on all everything you’ve missed out on over the week, you don’t have to have watched a film to…
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Harmonium: A perfect lil film

Harmonium is a film of two halves. The first, a slow burn tension flick: a family’s life is disturbed by the emergence of a figure from the husband’s past. Who is this mysterious dude? Why is he now living in their house? Is he plotting something; he certainly seems shifty. Then at the moment of…
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Unlocked: Anodyne spy action

There seems something vaguely inappropriate about Orlando Bloom saying, in one of the worst Jason Statham impressions of recent time, that one of his ‘mates’ died in the 7/7 attacks. At least his attempt is entertaining, so little else in the film is.

