All content tagged featured

Priscilla

Never meet your heroes, the saying goes. Sofia Coppola’s PRISCILLA would posit that neither should you marry them, have a kid with them, or agree to live in their gilded cage.

Poor Things

Leave it to Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek purveyor of oddities, to attempt the supposedly unadaptable POOR THINGS, Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of conflicting points of view, paratextual playfulness, and his trademark commentary on Glaswegian goings-on. The film follows Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter, a woman reanimated after her death with the brain of an unborn baby, … Continue reading Poor Things

Fingernails

Christos Nikou’s second feature doesn’t quite reach memorable comic and painful heights, but does have something to say about modernity’s continual perversion of the human experience and the need to dissect, categorise, and package it. Romance is far from dead, but FINGERNAILS takes a forlorn look at what might kill it.

Ken Loach & Paul Laverty: The Old Oak

“Telling stories of the working class means you can incorporate them as full characters with complexities and humour and struggles and sadness and joy and all the rest of it that make them human and not stereotypes or cliches. One thing you never see is their strength.” At the North-East premiere of THE OLD OAK, writer Paul Laverty sat down to chat about the film, while director Loach spoke over a video call.

Is There Anybody Out There?

IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE? is a cry for solidarity outside the bounds of what society considers normal. Filmmaker Ella Glendining is as exacting and rigorous with her assumptions as she is in challenging others, encouraging an empathetic reflection as the film’s ending scenes roll.

Anatomy of a Fall

A competent, intriguing drama like this gaining award traction feels more symptomatic of it being the kind of good film that is now a rare occurrence within the film zeitgeist, rather than one that feels like it will be remembered after the award cycle.