The Coen brothers have given us some great films, like the brilliant Fargo and the Oscar winning No Country For Old Men, which is why their latest offering is a little disappointing by comparison. With Hail, Caesar! the filmmaking siblings return to the Golden Years of Hollywood in the 50s, which was the backdrop of…
When I wrote about Burning earlier this year, I mentioned that East Asian cinema was having something of a “moment”. Well, that “moment” continues with Joon Ho Bong’s Palme d’Or (2019) winner, Parasite. A veteran of Korean cinema, Bong is probably best known here for 2013’s Snowpiercer. Sci-fi has been his forte, so Parasite is…
Oscar winning filmmaker Hal Ashby was something of an uncompromising maverick who preferred to work outside the studio system because he believed they valued commerce over art. “Studios are the enemy of the artist,” his friend and mentor Norman Jewison told him rather frankly. Ashby won an Oscar for his work on editing Jewison’s In…
How not to plan and execute a heist. Four totally clueless amateurs get involved in something they should never have attempted in American Animals. Frighteningly, it’s based on relatively recent reality. The story centres around unpredictable wild child Warren (Evan Peters) and aspiring artist Spencer (Barry Keoghan), two friends from the middle-class suburbs of Lexington,…
Massively shaky camera movements and terrifying sounds are the order of the day for Blair Witch, a follow-up to the highly successful The Blair Witch Project, which was released to much acclaim in 1999. It’s been 20 years since James’s sister and her two friends vanished into the Black Hills Forest in Maryland while researching…
What a hoot! Who ever believed the disco ball was dead? Clearly they hadn’t seen VELVET, an ode to all that was great about the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Mostly that was about the music, but in this show – which claimed “Pick of the Fringe (Festival)” and “Best of The Fringe” awards – it concerns the “look…
A relentless, super intelligent mind puzzle, which gets better and better as the stakes grow, this is one of the year’s best offerings. Based upon Herman Koch’s 2009 international bestselling novel – which has been published in more than 50 countries – The Dinner is a dark, suspenseful drama about the lengths people will go…
Can we escape a tortured past? That question is at the heart of the new drama Lyceum Highway, written by KV Adams and debuting at Meat Market Stables. The story starts with Maggie (Laura Iris Hill) wrapping herself in a brightly coloured crocheted blanket, admitting that she needs help. A blackness is overwhelming and consuming…
How can you stand up to a bully? That’s the question at the centre of the crime drama Dogman. Timid dog groomer Marcello is separated from the mother of his young daughter, whom he adores … and vice versa. He lives in a barren, downtrodden Italian neighbourhood and gets on well with everyone. To make…
Lean On Pete is a gritty coming-of-age story about a boy and his love for a horse. Fifteen-year old Charley Thompson (played by Charlie Plummer, who played Christopher Plummer’s kidnapped grandson in All the Money in the World) is a itinerant teen. He’s travelling around Oregon with his father Ray (Travis Fimmel) who’s looking for…
