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…
With a life span approaching that of many a dinosaur (30 years), the Jurassic saga comes to an end with Jurassic World Dominion. And as T. S. Eliot presaged, this fictional world ends not with a bang but a whimper. The franchise – having received a shot in the arm with Jurassic World in 2015…
Asghar Farhadi (A Separation – which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012) is an Iranian filmmaker of extraordinary insight and skill. He writes and directs movies involving ordinary people that have moral quandaries. So it is with his latest film, A Hero. Rahim Soltani (Amir Jadidi) is a man whose wife…
A creepy, well-made horror movie, Hatching bites. Young gymnastics student Tinja appears to have the perfect Finnish family. At least her social media obsessed mother wants the outside world to believe that. It is all about perfect smiles and beautiful things. She is also one of those pushy parents who desperately wants her daughter to…
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…
Five lost souls in their early 30s try to get more out of life than what they have in John Patrick Shanley’s Savage in Limbo. Set in a bar in the Bronx in the 1980s, the barman has a strict rule – if you don’t have a drink in front of you, then you’re out. April White…
Two strangers find themselves trapped in a barren room with a gun. They have no idea how they got there or what will become of them. In any event, the outlook is bleak. One could shoot the other or they could both starve to death. The character known simply as A (Boaz Hulme) starts with bravado, but then his…
What is fact and what is fiction? You are left asking that question after an exhilarating 50 minutes at Chapel Off Chapel, with the wonderfully written and performed gay political thriller Dirt. The intrigue keeps ratcheting up. Just when you think you have a fix on what is going on, the rug is pulled from under you. The…
Two loners connect over literature. One is a 53-year-old Yale professor of creative writing. The other is a freshman who is engaged by her lectures. They bond over Dostoevsky. Bella Baird is a single woman without children. Her father passed away from a heart attack at age 62 and her mum died a horrible death from stomach cancer when…
