The Kitchen Brigade is a modest but generally upbeat French comedy and underdog drama from filmmaker Louis Julien Petit, who has worked as a second unit director on a number of popular and successful Gallic comedies like Welcome To The Sticks. The film centres around Cathy Marie (Audrey Lamy), a sous chef who works in…
Men is the third feature film from Alex Garland, best known for Ex Machina and for writing the novel The Beach, which was the source of the Danny Boyle film starring Leonardo Di Caprio. This is a creepy and unsettling film that subverts many of the usual tropes of the horror genre and is more…
Benediction is a complex but ultimately moving biopic about the revered Siegfried Sassoon, one of Britain’s great war time poets. Sassoon wrote about the futility of war, the loss of lives and the waste of a generation on the battlefield. He was also a homosexual who had to hide his sexuality in public. This is…
Mothering Sunday is a period drama about doomed love which comes across like an edgier variation on Upstairs Downstairs. The film is set mainly in the spring of 1924. The central character is Jane Fairchild (played by Australian actress Odessa Young), a maid working for the aristocratic Niven family. Jane is an orphan and although…
What do women want? Writer/director Renee Webster explores the question in her debut feature film How To Please A Woman. Webster has worked extensively in television on series like The Heights. Gina (Sally Phillips) is a middle-aged woman stuck in a loveless marriage. Her husband Adrian (Cameron Daddo) is a stuffy workaholic attorney who has…
Based on a true story, Firebird is a heartbreaking queer romance is set on an air base in Soviet controlled Estonia in the late 70s. It centres around a young soldier who embarks on a clandestine romance with a handsome fighter pilot. The film is based on the 1996 memoir written by Russian actor Segei…
Rosalind Ross’s directorial debut Father Stu is based on the true story of Stuart Long. He was a struggling boxer from Montana forced to quit the fight game after suffering too many blows. He ultimately found religion and after many setbacks became an ordained Catholic priest. The conversion came much to the surprise and chagrin…
The final film from director Roger Michell (whose drama The Duke is currently screening in cinemas), Elizabeth: A Portrait in Part(s) is a documentary about Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning British monarch. The documentary has been released to coincide with her platinum jubilee. While this may not be the definitive portrait of Queen Elizabeth…
Creator Julian Fellowes seems determined to squeeze every last drop out of the Downton Abbey saga. The popular television series set in the impressive titular stately rural mansion home of the wealthy Crawley clan finished its run in 2015, but Fellowes revived it with a stand-alone film (also titled Downton Abbey) in 2019 that brought…
Director Robert Eggers previously gave us the supernatural stylings of 2015’s The Witch and 2019’s austere and claustrophobic The Lighthouse. Now, with The Northman, he gives us a violent, gory tale of revenge and morality set in 10th century Iceland that takes its cues from Shakespeare’s classic tale Hamlet. King Aurvandill War Raven (Ethan Hawke)…
