Belfast

I got a touch of neck ache watching Ken Branagh’s child’s eye view of life in his home town at the outbreak of the “troubles” in 1969. This was because I was sitting too close to the screen and DoP Haris Zambarloukos chose to shoot much of his gorgeous monochrome footage from about 3ft off…

Nightmare Alley

Not a disaster certainly and with a number of important redeeming features, but overall this was a missed opportunity from the usually sure footed Guillermo Del Toro, who has adapted a novel by William Lyndsay Gresham in a way which favours style over substance and mood over incisive storytelling. Not so much the American Dream,…

Licorice Pizza

Well you’ve got to hand it to Paul Thomas Anderson, it takes some balls to include David Bowie’s Life on Mars on your film’s playlist. The line “But the film was a saddening bore” invites all too easy derision. Now critics of this film have fallen broadly into two camps. Most see it as a…

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain

If you put electricity thro a cat (in a good way) would it become catalytic or catatonic? I only ask because this was the question I found myself musing on as I cat napped my way thro this turgid biopic. Here was a film in serious need of a shot of adrenaline, to catapult it…

Lamb

After giving us a Ram in 2016 and now a Lamb, I’m looking forward to the Icelandic Film Board’s next offering, when they will no doubt be looking to complete their trilogy with a Ding Dong. Actually this was a Swedish, Icelandic and, curiously, Polish co production which starred Hilmir Snaer Guonason as Ingvar and…

Bad Luck Banging and Loony Porn

Ermmm. I came to this, intrigued by the title, but not knowing much about it beyond what the brief Phoenix trailer told me. A Romanian offering from director Radu Jude who won a Golden Bear at Berlin; about a teacher undone by the malicious posting of a sex tape. So I was momentarily taken aback…