DVD Review – Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me
There are few more recognisable names in country music than Glen Campbell. He’s been writing and performing music for over fifty years and released more than seventy albums. Indeed, he’s an iconic figure in Showbusiness and was the first person to win a Grammy in two different categories. In 2011 came the announcement that he …
Incoming: Sing Street
Sing Street takes us back to 1980s Dublin where an economic recession forces Conor out of his comfortable private school and into survival mode at the inner-city public school where the kids are rough and the teachers are rougher. He finds a glimmer of hope in the mysterious and uber-cool Raphina, and with the aim …
Incoming: The Call Up
When a group of elite online gamers each receive a mysterious invitation to trial a state-of-the-art virtual reality video game, it’s a dream come true and impossible to resist. Arriving at the test site, the group step into hi-tech gear and prepare for a revolutionary, next-level gaming experience that brings modern warfare to life with …
DVD Review: Journey to the Shore (Masters of Cinema)
Kurosawa is a household name for film fans around the world, but Akira is not the only master auteur who possesses that surname. Kiyoshi Kurosawa made his name making creepy and unnerving horror films. Kairo is my favourite genre film of all time and Cure is also a fantastic slice of terror. In recent years …
Film Festival Preview: Sheffield Doc/Fest 2016
Now with Liz McIntyre at the helm, Sheffield Doc/Fest returns between 10-15 June with another marvellously diverse line-up. Once again there’s a brilliant and eclectic range of documentaries, including 27 World and 52 UK premières. There will be two outdoor screens, the Guardian Screen in Tudor Square and the Beijing Screen on Howard Street. Following …
Incoming: Departure
An English mother and her teenage son spend a week packing up the contents of their remote holiday house in the South of France. Fifteen-year-old Elliot (Alex Lawther) struggles with his dawning sexuality and an increasing alienation from his mother, Beatrice (Juliet Stevenson). She in turn is confronted by the realisation that her marriage to …
DVD Review: The Last Command (Masters of Cinema)
Director Josef von Sternberg is best known for the films he made with Marlene Dietrich. Indeed, he’s often credited with being the catalyst behind her career. He cast the then unknown actress as his female lead in the first German talkie, The Blue Angel, which proved to be her big break. They went on to …
Incoming: Our Kind of Traitor
While on holiday in Marrakech, an ordinary English couple, Perry (Ewan McGregor) and Gail (Naomie Harris), befriend a flamboyant and charismatic Russian, Dima (Stellan Skarsgard), who unbeknownst to them is a kingpin money launderer for the Russian mafia. When Dima asks for their help to deliver classified information to the British Secret Services, Perry and …
Incoming: Green Room
Down on their luck punk rockers The Ain’t Rights are finishing up a long and unsuccessful tour, and are about to call it quits when they get an unexpected booking at an isolated, run-down club deep in the backwoods of Oregon. What seems merely to be a third-rate gig escalates into something much more sinister …
Film Review: The Seventh Fire
Life in America has been nothing but consistent for Native Americans (I’m applying the self-identified term used in the film) since the Mayflower landed. From the first colonisers, through the Wild West and on to the modern day ghettos and casinos, they’re a group who’ve been constantly abused, killed and now discarded by the migrant …