Rams

Look out Shaun The Sheep -The Movie, there’s a new contender for my favourite ovine based cinema treat in the shape of Rams. It’s an hypnotic little film that draws you inexorably into the world of Icelandic sheep farming but delivers a creepy uppy emotional kick that was as devastating as it was unexpected. Gimmi…

Truth

A well made but profoundly dispiriting film by first time director James Vandebilt which tells the story of a scandal which gripped the American media in 2004. The flagship CBS current affairs programme 60 Minutes was engaged in some good old fashioned investigative journalism and had uncovered compelling evidence that in 1970 George W Bush…

Trumbo

I am attempting to write this review in the bath and have developed a new and profound respect for Dalton Trumbo (Brian Cranston) who seems to have done most of his best work in the tub. My fingers have already turned pruney and I haven’t even finished the first sentence. On a modern device, the…

The Assassin

Well. If I had been adrift in an open boat on the high seas without a compass and blindfolded, I couldn’t have been more lost than I was in trying to make heads or tails of this. There’s absolutely no point in me attempting a plot summary as I had next to no idea what…

A War

This Oscar nominated take on the Afghan war from Denmark’s Tobias Lindhlom opens with a a group of young soldiers on patrol in a barren unforgiving landscape. Their objectives are unclear and a fateful sense of dread hangs over the mission. When the inevitable tragedy strikes it is viscerally shocking, but in a curious way…

Youth

Having only just recently caught up with Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar winner – The Great Beauty – my overriding impression of Youth was one of deja vu. Both films are long and languid. Both are beautifully shot with glossy production values. Both feature as their main character an elderly white male who has been successful in…

Bone Tomahawk

Dag Nabbit pardner fer nigh on two hours Craig Zahler’s debut feature played out like somethin’ from the 1940s. Squint  yer eyes a mite and this could be The Searchers or a John Houston film with Humphrey Bogarde instead o’ Kurt Russell and Walter Brennan standing in fer Richard Jenkins. “Yer ever bin stung by…

The Finest Hours

Australian Craig Gillespie (Fright Night, Lars and the Real Girl) may not seem an obvious choice for Disney to direct this based-on-true-events story but he acquits himself rather well and delivers a 3D experience which actually made sense. Its February 1952 and in Quincy Massachuscetts a force ten gale is blowing. The coastguard is on…

Creed

There’s a deliciously mischievous moment halfway through this affectionate reboot of the Rocky franchise by Ryan Coogler. Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan) and his musician girlfriend Bianca (Tessa Thompson) have taken a moment out of training and performing respectively to pay a social call on Rocky Balboa (Sly Stallone). After a communal meal they relax…

Eagle Vs Shark

A sweet comedy of teenage angst from New Zealand’s Taiki Waititi who has great fun channelling his inner Wes Anderson. This 2006 offering was another product of the Phoenix’s cult series of mystery movies. Again it was sold out with a largely young audience who seemed to be enjoying the antics of Jarrod (Flight of…

The Big Short

An ambitious and well intentioned attempt to throw some light on the murky financial world of American investment banking in the period leading up to the crash of 2008. Director Andy McKay (Anchorman) has assembled a rat pack of male Hollywood A listers to breathe celebrity life into a story adapted from the source book…

Spotlight

A serious, unsensational but hugely important film which lifts the lid (definitely) on child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. It makes me thank providence that I was neither born nor raised into this vile and hateful religion. Set in 2001 director Tom McCarthy focuses on the painstaking work of the Boston Globe’s investigative Spotlight…