Denial

A legal procedural which sticks to the pertinent facts of holocaust denial and, as a result of its admirable doggedness, produces a welcome and important antidote to the depessing world of ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternate facts’ we currently find ourselves immersed in. It’s a film which despite its grim core left me feeling uplifted and I…

The Lost City of Z

If you’re of a certain age and inclination you will no doubt recall the classic Monty Python sketch where a callow Michael Palin shows up for a job interview at the Royal Geographic Society. He is interviewed by John Cleese playing a veteran explorer suffering from double vision. “We’re off to climb the twin peaks…

The Salesman

This year’s Oscar winner for best foreign language film and a multiple winner at Cannes, Asghar Farhadi’s latest forey into the buttoned up world of middle class Iranians takes as its starting point the disintegration of an apartment block and the consequent displacement of its tenants Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and his wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti).…

Prevenge

Alice Lowe writes, directs and stars in this entertaining low budget mash up about pregnancy and revenge which might just as easily have been called The Revnant if Leo DiCaprio hadn’t got there first. She plays Ruth who is seven months pregnant and lives alone in a Cardiff tower block. Her backstory which is delivered…

Christine

From Network to Nightcrawler cinema has a long and impressive history exposing the dark underbelly of television news coverage. It’s something which comes to mind every time I watch one of those early evening regional bulletins and Anne Davis or Dominic Heale exchange wince inducing small talk as they link deathly dull vox pops, or…

The Love Witch

There’s a hypnotic “is this for real?” feel about Anna Biller’s love letter to 1960s horror/sexploitation, which makes you think she must be the secret love child of Russ Meyer, adopted by Dario Argento and schooled by Wes Anderson. The film took 10 years from conception to premiere and Anna must have lived and breathed…

It’s Only the End of the World

….or One Flew out of the Cuckoo Clock. After taking the art house cinema audience by storm with his first 4 feature films (all made before his 25th birthday) Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan here bites off a bit more than he can comfortably chew. Perhaps it was working with such a stellar cast, or maybe…

Free Fire

An IRA quartermaster, Chris (Cillian Murphy) is in Boston to buy weapons. (actually it’s not Boston, it’s a location at the back of Director Ben Wheatley’s house – as he confided to us at a post preview Q&A.) He is accompanied by Frank (Michael Smiley) an experienced fixer, Stevie (Sam Riley) a drug addled loose…

Toni Erdmann

Rather bravely set in Bucharest, on this evidence one of the ugliest cities in the world, Toni Erdmann is either an absorbing contemplation on a failed father/daughter relationship or an outree tribute to the late Jeremy Beedle. My money is on the latter. Well I suppose we must applaud our German cousins for having a…