Tag: Drama
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The Promise: Declawed horror
If there was any promise evident in Terry George and Robin Swicord’s often clunking screenplay before production started, it is not apparent in the final film. It has been stolen away, in these flat, overlit scenes edited with a clear mandate to keep the running time low and accompanied by this overwrought score.
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A Dog’s Purpose: It’s a pup
‘I feel mislead by the advertising of A Dog’s Purpose’, is a stupid statement by a stupid person. It’s also my feeling. Like, it’s supposed to be about this dog being reincarnated in order to figure out what their life’s purpose is. There’s a whole bunch of posters with extreme close ups of loads of…
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Clash: Political hotbox
I’m trying to calculate how much my wish for Clash to deal more directly with its politics is an extension of my own privilege. I mean, complaining that a film ain’t catering to my tastes as I sit in a nice seat in a art cinema with an almost entirely white clientele, seems almost hypocritical.…
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The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki: Just lovely
See, just when I was getting disillusioned a good film about straight people comes along. Maybe there is some worth in them. A Finnish film about a 1960s boxer’s training in the lead up to a world championship bout stealths its way into being the best love movie in a while. Mainly because what the…
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The Sense of an Ending: This fucking guy
I’m sure The Sense of an Ending is a very accomplished film. It looks pretty and has a bunch of good performances. Jim Broadbent, looking more Jeremy Corbyn than ever, is more than believable in his role, a creaking aging man wiling away his retirement in a specialist camera shop which keeps its Yale lock…
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Their Finest: Its own propaganda
Chris Nolan’s Dunkirk is coming out later this year. I hope it’s good. The film websites are already full of the news, Director of Photography Hoyte Van Hoytema, manhandling the IMAX camera to capture war’s viscera. The trailer for it actually was played before my screening. Maybe we’ll someday get a film about its production…
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Lady Macbeth: No, not that one
I caught a preview of Lady Macbeth at the Watershed, Bristol, accompanied by a Q&A by director William Oldroyd. The film releases to UK cinemas on April 28. She’s not that Lady Macbeth. Not the famous one. Not the, ‘Out, damned spot!’ and the ‘Come, you spirits/ that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/…
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The Handmaiden: Lesbian movie night
The Handmaiden is like the purest film. It’s a violent, kinda screwed up, crime thriller but, underneath all that surface there it has this wonderful innocent heart. Maybe I’m saying that because it’s a costume drama about queer women, which I am all about, but equally they are women whose queerness does not express itself…
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Some Cold Takes: The Lost City of Z and Ghost in the Shell
The Lost City of Z Patriarchy’s one hell of a drug innit? Percy Fawcett can just go off to Bolivia, searching for his lost city, neglecting his wife and children who carry on in England without him. Whiteness is toxic. He tries to disrupt paternalistic eurocentrism by searching for civilisation in Southern America, yet neglects…
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Raw: I just realised, it’s probably about vegetarianism too…
Holy shit. Holy shit y’all. Holy shit. Raw is Julia Ducournau’s first feature. It’s the sort of first feature people dream of making. The sort of debut that means something. It’s a French language film the screened in the UK with the standard Universal Pictures ident at the lead, that don’t just happen here. Not…
A Grand Quiet 