It would be easy to dismiss this charming crowd-pleasing little film as a Gallic variation of the Oscar winning Driving Miss Daisy. But this French drama, which screened during the recent Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, is so much more. Madeleine Keller (played by veteran singer and actress Line Renaud, recently seen in Call My…
Toy company Hasbro created their line of giant shape changing robots known as Transformers way back in 1984. Then came the animated television series in 1985, which then became an animated movie in 1986 and which featured the vocal talents of Leonard Nimoy, legendary actor Orson Welles, and even DJ Casey Kasem as the voices…
The rise and fall and spectacular comeback of Tina Turner is one of the great stories from the annals of rock n roll, and it all makes for a fantastic stage drama. Turner, known as the Queen of Rock has won eight Grammy Awards, sold over 200 million records and has twice been inducted into…
Director Eric Lavaine reunites most of the cast of his 2014 ensemble comedy Barbecue and brings them back to reprise their characters for this sequel, which was one of the hits of the recent French Film Festival. Happy 50 is also known as Plancha (“griddle”) in its original French. Eight years after the events of…
The feelgood film The Bank of Dave is based on the true story of Dave Fishwick; a businessman from Burnley, one of the most deprived towns in northern England. Dave became wealthy from running his own business selling vans to local customers, and he began loaning money to locals in need of support to help…
The Blue Caftan is a sensitive and engaging queer themed story. It won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes in 2022 and was Morocco’s official entry for the Oscars. The film centres around a middle-aged married couple named Mina (Lubna Azabal) and Halim (Saleh Bakri) who are childless. Mina and Halim run a small sewing shop…
Based on a true story, this is a dramatic recreation of a court case that took place in the French town of Saint Omer in 2016. Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda) is a young mother and Senegalese immigrant who is put on trial for having killed her fifteen months old daughter, supposedly to protect her from…
This documentary is a loving tribute to fashion icon Mary Quant, who typified the changing face of Britain through the 60s and 70s. She was a trailblazer who was credited with creating the mini-skirt and who was well known for her dynamic use of colours and this film puts her life into context with what…
The latest film from Brandon Cronenberg (son of legendary Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg) is a hybrid mix of sci-fi, horror and trenchant social commentary. He takes on class, wealth, privilege, artistic conceits, power, western decadence, guilt and the breakdown of civilization. It comes across like a fevered, darker and more transgressive variation on the recent…
Four elderly women head off on a road trip to the 2017 Superbowl in Texas in support of their idol Tom Brady – the famed quarterback for the New England Patriots regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the NFL. Another of those films which delight in seeing older folk kick…
