Stay Awake
STAY AWAKE’s interest in a microcosm of the US opioid crisis rather than the grand picture limits the film’s scope, and its emotional strength is limited by an insistence on diverting attention away from the addict.
All posts by Connor Lightbody
Thomas Hardiman interview
Director of Medusa Deluxe, Thomas Hardiman, spoke about his audacious one-take whodunnit set in a hairdressing salon, about blowing up walls with dynamite, baby agents of chaos, and working with music producer Koreless.
Medusa Deluxe
In Tom Hardiman’s audacious whodunnit debut, MEDUSA DELUXE, it’s the hair that is cursed, and a trio of viperous contestants each embody a facet of the Gorgonite sister mythology.
Reality
Adapting from her own play, Tina Satter takes on a Herculean task with REALITY: transforming a stage production into a compelling film, all while continuing to keep the same true information and dialogue of an FBI interrogation transcript.
The Blue Caftan
THE BLUE CAFTAN is a film that rewards patience, and Maryam Touzani’s decision to keep the camera lingering on her stars’ bright, pained eyes in intimate moments enhances the emotional connection behind them.
Skin Deep
SKIN DEEP has high ambitions but is too unfocused, and a lack of attention in navigating the finer elements of body dysmorphia squanders the film’s intriguing premise.
Past Lives
PAST LIVES – Celine Song’s deeply human film about the pain of missed chances and the hard truths – flows from beat to beat with aching precision and evokes guttural melancholy over and over again.
Femme
FEMME comes with intriguing moral grey areas that make the picture so utterly compelling, despite the broad strokes and cliché from which the narrative framework takes inspiration.
BlackBerry
Glenn Howerton almost rescues this uneven, chaotic film but this is the BlackBerry of techy biopics. It’s nothing new anymore.
Blue Jean and media-reinforced heteronormativity
There is a central idea between the dramatic unfoldings of BLUE JEAN: internalised homophobia triggers a fight or flight response. Walter Bradford Cannon’s famous ‘fight or flight’ theory, otherwise known as Acute Stress Response, is referenced early in Georgia Oakley’s outstanding feature debut. In BLUE JEAN, the stress Oakley’s Geordie protagonist Jean responds to is that of Margaret Thatcher’s homophobic amendment to British Law: Section 28.