Custody is built on fear – the fear inspired by a man prepared to do anything to get back a woman who wants nothing to do with him in a bid to escape his violent behaviour. Miriam (Léa Drucker) and Antoine (Denis Ménochet) Besson have divorced. Antoine is seen as a permanent threat to those…
Set during the last great Ice Age in Europe some 20,000 years ago, Alpha is an epic adventure. This brutal tale of survival in a harsh wilderness is a bit like a prehistoric version of The Revenant. It’s also something of a coming of age tale as it follows a teen’s journey to manhood. There…
Joaquin Phoenix is ideally suited to fill the role of an inveterate drinker who pays a horrendous price for his addiction, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. Phoenix frequently tackles more obtuse material and appears to revel in it. The last day slacker John Callahan (Phoenix), who lives in the US city of…
While looking at the film poster, the first thing I thought was: “Wow, Halle Berry has a thing for films about kidnapping”. First, there was The Call. And then at the beginning of the year, I saw Kidnap. And now it’s a film about human trafficking. In particular, the kidnapping of young women who then…
Luna Gale is an American play, by Rebecca Gilman, written in 2014. Luna Gale has been taken into custody for her own safety. She is the baby daughter of Karlie (Lucy Heffernan) and Peter (Jacob Warner). They are, unfortunately, meth addicts, and have been dangerously neglectful of their child. Karlie’s mother, Cindy (Michelle Doake), a…
From the outer reaches of space to the backwoods of Georgia, the hunt goes on in Shane Black’s reboot of the Predator series. Black, who directed Lethal Weapon and wrote Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, played the role of Hawkins in 1987’s original Predator. Here, he directs from a script he penned with Fred Dekker (RoboCop…
Michael Pearce’s feature film debut Beast explores the line between evil and misunderstanding. Moll Huntford (Jessie Buckley) was home-schooled by her domineering mother, Hilary (Geraldine James) after an incident at school more than a decade earlier. Now a tour guide on the Channel Island of Jersey, she can’t stand the constraints placed on her at…
The fast-paced and decidedly “now” thriller Searching employs social media in its full glory. It also marks the first time a mainstream Hollywood thriller has been headlined by an Asian-American actor. David Kim (John Cho), his late wife Pamela (Sara Sohn) and their daughter Margot (Michelle La) were a great team. But Pamela unexpectedly became sick and died from cancer….
Paul Feig steps away from broad comedy and onto the darker side with A Simple Favour. This pulpy thriller certainly has Feig’s fingerprints on it, but it’s easily his most expressive film in ages – maybe ever. Of course, the film invites comparisons with the David Fincher’s wonderful Gone Girl. But A Simple Favour is…
Zoe is not just a film about artificial intelligence and the influence it will have on our society. It also shows how artificial our society will be in the future. A world where feelings are reduced to figures and where pharmaceutical concoctions provide a short but intense expression of love. Both with disastrous results. Couples…
