Juliet Naked

It says a lot for the charm and likability of Ethan Hawke (Tucker Crowe) and Rose Byrne (Annie Platt) that a film with such an utterly preposterous premise should glide along so effortlessly, with wisdom and whimsy equal partners. It was like small beacon of light in an ever darkening world. Nick Hornby’s latest adaptation…

Widows

I have enormous respect for what Steve McQueen has achieved in such a short time behind the camera and was looking forward keenly to his Chicago set adaptation of Lynda La Plante’s small screen hit. It was an opportunity for him to let his hair down, splash the cash and explore the limits of a…

Bohemian Rhapsody

It would take a timber order on a scale that God might have balked at when Noah put in his chitty, to cobble together a film as wooden as this. I say cobbled together advisedly as nominal director Bryan Singer walked off the set around the mid point unable to deal with the rancour which…

The Guilty

A short, cheap, minimalist production from Danish director Gustav Moller, which manages to be an intense and subtle character study whilst at the same time delivering a taut, twisting, thriller narrative. But its main point of interest is the extraordinary aural experience; it was an object lesson in sound design and I can totally see…

Peterloo

As I came out of the screening I overheard an elderly audience member complaining loudly about Mike Leigh’s oversimplification and his partisanship in depicting the events of August 16th 1819. Well I suppose if you were making a film about the Holocaust you’d expect some balance wouldn’t you? After all who could argue that the…

The Little Stranger

This comes from the same stable as My Cousin Racheal in that it’s a film capable of numerous wildly divergent  interpretations. Based on the book by Sarah Waters its set very specifically between the end of WWII and the introduction of the Welfare State. We follow the story through the eyes and first person account…

Possum

One of the most ill fated of career choices would surely be Sean Harris becoming a children’s entertainer. But this is part of the backstory of Philip (who doesn’t appear to have a surname), an extraordinarily troubled man, who has unsurprisingly failed in his vocation and is forced to return home where his creepy stepfather…