Mad bugger. That was my first thought when I saw one of the opening shots in this picturesque documentary, completed with the accompaniment of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. There was this bloke scaling a sheer cliff face, seemingly without any form of aid, staring death in the face. His hands and feet were searching for…
The win at all costs mentality that underpins The Beep Test carries with it a high price. This is Year 7C, whose driven PE teacher channels his own unfulfilled ambitions into the captain of the football team, a standout player and reigning beep test champion. I speak of a multi-stage fitness test, in which participants…
The astounding Romanian documentary Collective exposes corruption on a scale I haven’t seen. The immorality reaches into the highest echelons of the health system, killing patients who would otherwise survive. This happened recently – in October 2015 to be more precise – and it took an investigative reporter, Catalin Tolontan, and two of his colleagues,…
Boxing films of distinction have a long and illustrious history. Think Rocky, Raging Bull, When We Were Kings, The Boxer, Million Dollar Baby and The Fighter, to name but a few. First up then, a technical explanation. Southpaw, in boxing parlance, for those not associated with the sport, is the regular stance for a left-handed…
Revered children’s author Roald Dahl and Academy Award winning actress Patricia Neal had a tumultuous marriage. And director John Hay puts it under the microscope in To Olivia. Dahl (Hugh Bonneville) and Neal (Keeley Hawes) brought up a family in Buckinghamshire. The highly imaginative Dahl revelled in vocalising off-the-wall stories to his children. That was…
Well, that was a year! With everything that went on in 2020, movies proved both a comfort and a hope for better times. The big story of the year was the rise of streaming as a genuine alternative to (and in some cases, a replacement for) traditional cinemas. Those changes played out elsewhere, and we…
Sensitive, poignant and energetic, tick, tick… BOOM! is a wonderfully engaging musical about the trials and tribulations of a struggling, angst-riddled creative artist who is about to turn 30 with success continuing to elude him. His name is Jon and he is portrayed with high-octane verve by Luigi Lucente (Wicked, Jersey Boys). It really is…
All things considered, 2017 was a pretty good year for movies. Not for Hollywood itself mind you. The scandals that plagued Tinseltown have been well covered elsewhere, so we’re not going to get into them here. But the consensus seems to be that the quality of movies this year was a cut above. By the…
Smile is a genuinely scary and engaging psychological horror movie. It centres around a hard-working therapist in an emergency psychiatric unit, named Dr Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon). As Dr Cotter is about to leave the facility after a particularly long shift, a young graduate student Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey) enters shaking and clearly traumatised. In…
The world premiere comedy Lottie in the Late Afternoon explores some big questions. What is life all about? Can it be meaningful? What is the path to true happiness? Lottie (Laura Maitland) who works in a craft store, and her 37-year-old husband Ryan (Linc Hasler), are stress-heads. They rarely get time to see each other,…
