Film
Blu-Ray Review: Defending Your Life
As humans, we spend a disproportionate amount of time contemplating our own mortality. Sometimes at the expense of actually ‘living’. This inquisitiveness often centres on what happens after we depart this mortal coil. Is that it or is there something else? Life after death. Reincarnation. Heaven and Hell. Indeed, the concept of an eternal life …
Blu-Ray Review: Lost in America
Most of us spend much of our lives working, often in grey office blocks in some soulless and essentially pointless white-collar profession. Doing much the same thing, day in, day out. Never really making enough money to do much more than take a holiday every year. Maybe buy a house, start a family. Some people …
French Film Festival UK Review: The Translators
It’s often said that everyone has a book in them. Thankfully, most people don’t take up the challenge. Even so, it’s incredibly difficult to get a novel published, let alone make a living out of writing. However, sometimes an author manages to catch the imagination and becomes hot property. E-books and the internet have added …
Film Review: Francesco
Pope Francis, or Jorge Mario Bergoglio to his friends, is unique in many ways. He’s the first pope to hail from the Americas and the first from the southern hemisphere. Not since the eighth century has there been a head of the Roman Catholic Church from outside of Europe. Most importantly of all, there has …
Film Review: Memories of My Father
Héctor Abad Gómez was a prominent Columbian doctor, university professor and human rights activist. He is responsible for the foundation of the Colombian National School of Public Health and pioneering a number of public health programmes for the poor in Medellín. During his later life, his focus shifted towards tackling the injustices within his country; …
Film Review: The Toll
Genre cinema is full of nightmarish visions. Whether that’s witches, ghouls, vampires, werewolves, aliens, ancient gods or just about every monstrous creature the brain can possibly devise. Indeed, whilst folklore, myths and legends hold their own dread, there’s nothing which can rival the human imagination when it comes to conjuring up terror. This is a …
BFI Flare Review: Kiss Me Before It Blows Up
Families can be complex, confusing, confounding and confrontational, but more often than not blood is thicker than water. All families have a tangled web of inter-relationships, shared histories and those topics avoided at all costs. However, when you’ve finally found that special someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, your nearest …
BFI Flare Review: Cured
Today, being gay in a progressive society generally means being a second-class citizen in one way or another. Seen, accepted but usually not afforded the same legal protections as someone in a heterosexual relationship. In less open and tolerant countries it remains a criminal office, often punishable by death. However, there was a time, even …
Blu-Ray Review: The Black Windmill
It must be strange to be born to a generation which doesn’t remember ‘domestic’ terrorism in the UK. Whilst ‘the Troubles’ cast a shadow over Northern Ireland for three decades, the spectre of the IRA was a constant threat in mainland Britain. Indeed, we seem to be heading in that direction again. Long before Islamic …
BFI Flare Review: Rebel Dykes
There once was a time when youthful rebellion and protest were a mainstay of British life. Indeed, activism and campaigning were often regular pastimes during the 1970s and early 1980s. Especially around the time when Margaret Thatcher came to power and society was becoming increasingly conservative. AIDS was on the rise and a number of …