See cinema differently
Director: Guillermo del Toro Stars: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette Roll up, roll up, ladies and germs. Spare a dime and gain entry, feast your eyes upon the eighth wonder of the world. Aye, a strange beast and that's for sure! What ye see in here, I say to thee, you'll give your sweetheart …
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal Stars: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson We're all flawed people, and often it's those malformed, knotty or unkempt portions of ourselves that define our individuality, for better and for worse. Maggie Gyllenhaal has made a 20 year career out of portraying a variety of knotty, unkempt, fallible women, with career highlights …
Director: Rebecca Hall Stars: Ruth Negga, Tessa Thompson, André Holland There's a scene in Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir in which young prospective filmmaker Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) is grilled on her desire to make a film about Sunderland dockworkers. She is questioned on why she has chosen a subject so alien to her own experience. One might …
Director: Antonio Campos Stars: Robert Pattinson, Riley Keough, Tom Holland The Southern States and the lineage of the American Gothic continue to attract creatives. Often the stories set among the forests of the Appalachian hills cleave close to the mythos of the American outlaw and also the roiling temperament of Man, and that nub of …
Director: Greta Gerwig Stars: Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson There's a scene in Noah Baumbach's Mistress America in which Greta Gerwig's character Brooke has to pitch her idea for New York restaurant called Mom's. The place would have big chunky furniture; where at the end of the night the chef and the service staff joined the …
Director: Barry Jenkins Stars: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King In 2005 my grandmother succumbed to bowel cancer in our home and I could hear her dying cries. I was laid up at the time following corrective knee surgery. That same summer my sister's partner was murdered. And I got my heart broken, maybe the …
Director: Francis Lawrence Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Matthias Schoenaerts, Joel Edgerton Director Francis Lawrence and the star of his three Hunger Games features, Jennifer Lawrence, reunite for something altogether different (yet naggingly familiar) with this smooth, slick and wholly soulless spy thriller based on a book by Jason Matthews. J-Law stars as Dominika Egorova, a renowned Bolshoi …
Director: Dee Rees Stars: Carey Mulligan, Jonathan Banks, Mary J Blige Dee Rees follows Pariah and Bessie with this Netflix Original; an adaptation of a novel by Hillary Jones, a period piece, a treaty on racism and post-war displacement in America, and a serious prestige picture ready for the upcoming awards season. The question of eligibility hangs …
Director: Luca Guadagnino Stars: Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg Food and sex have long been intermingled in art, with all manner of delicacies plummed for their erotic potentiality; the echoes of bodily shapes keying us in to the artist's intent. With that come the complexities of sexuality; of things deemed acceptable or not, illicit …
Director: Sofia Coppola Stars: Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst The arrival of a new Sofia Coppola film is always cause for excitement. With the triptych of The Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation and (the poorly received but enduring) Marie Antoinette she confirmed herself a major talent in American filmmaking, tapping into a thoughtful feminine ennui with her …
Director: Paul Verhoeven Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny This isn't going to be a very good review of Elle. I'm sat here behind the dashboard of this blog with the cursor blinking at me expectantly, still trying to shape my feelings about Paul Verhoeven's latest, but it's like trying to lay foundations for a …
Director: Colm McCarthy Stars: Gemma Arterton, Sennia Nanua, Glenn Close As one would imagine also applies to Mike Carey's novel (admission; I've not read it), the best way to approach The Girl With All The Gifts is with as little foreknowledge as possible, making the job of reviewing the thing that much trickier. The reason for …
Director: Gregg Araki Stars: Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Gabourey Sidibe The cinema is a verdant location for finding missing women. The mysteries of so many gone girls have revealed themselves on the silver screen, and Gregg Araki's latest, White Bird In A Blizzard, adapted from the book by Laura Kasischke, adds another iteration. Like the …
Year: 1963 Director: Luchino Visconti Stars: Burt Lancaster (Prince Don Fabrizio Salina), Claudia Cardinale (Angelica Sedara / Bertiana), Alain Delon (Tancredi Falconeri), Paolo Stoppa (Don Calogero Sedara), Rina Morelli (Princess Maria Stella Salina), Lucilla Morlacchi (Concetta) Genre: Literary Adaptation / Drama The Leopard: A dilettante's dissection. Some admissions upfront. 1) I've not finished Giuseppe Tomasi di …
Director: John Slattery Stars: Christina Hendricks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Glenn Fleshler God's Pocket is one of the last films starring Philip Seymour Hoffman to reach us (A Man Most Wanted will follow in a month or so, and the less said about his digitised presence in the remaining The Hunger Games instalments the better), so its easy …
The Lost Highway Hotel 