I couldn’t help thinking about the warped Jeffrey Epstein while watching Zoe Kravitz’s psychological thriller Blink Twice. The film concerns billionaire tech mogul Slater King (Channing Tatum), who steps aside after a major error of judgment. He ups his philanthropy, buys a private island and makes a series of very public apologies for his actions….
Writer Benjamin Nichol continues his incendiary anthology series of plays with the double bill Milk and Blood. Each 70 minutes in duration, they concern the trials and tribulations of a single mother and a gay escort. Both are hard hitting and powerful monologues, presenting snippets of the lives of characters simply called Mummy (in Milk)…
If I reference the word “suffragette”, the first name that will pop into many people’s heads will be Emmeline Pankurst (1858 – 1928). In 1903, she was a founding member of the Women’s Social and Political Union in the UK, which adopted the motto “deeds, not words”. Another associated with the movement was Sarah Jane…
Among Alien fandom there’s a broad consensus that the canonical films are the first two: Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and James Cameron’s Aliens (1986). Fede Alvarez’s new instalment Alien: Romulus is perhaps ideally placed between the two. So it serves as a kind of sequel to Alien and a prequel to Aliens. For me at…
Cinematic adaptations of video games have, for the most part, disappointed both gamers and movie goers; and the cinematic landscape is littered with failed adaptations. Borderlands follows the same inglorious footsteps of those that have come before it. Some of these failings can be attributed to studio interference and extensive rewrites and reshoots. Borderlands follows…
Trap is the latest film from M Night Shyamalan and, like so much of his oeuvre, it’s driven by an intriguing premise. But as with so many of his previous films it begins to lose momentum and credibility, especially during the unnecessarily drawn out third act. The film opens with Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett), a…
Lily Bloom’s father has just died. Her mother Jenny wants her to eulogise him at his funeral, but she can’t. Why not? That introduction sets in motion a chain of events that will see the sins of the father visited on the child. As a teenager, Lily struck up a loving relationship with a fellow…
The moral dilemma. Juicy. Delicious. Ideal for the stage. It is at the heart of Only Child, a new play from Leah Annetta. Divorced, uptight Veronika (Sarah Hallam) runs a wedding planning business. She lives with her mother Barbara (Michele Stayner) and her high achieving, 18-year-old daughter Anika (Alessandra Alessio). Anika, in her final year…
Patricia Font’s Spanish/Catalan-language film The Teacher Who Promised the Sea is based on fact, and shines a light on the horrors of the murderous Franco regime. The film uses a highly personal 2010 search to tell its story. Ariadna (Laia Costa) is a single mother whose grandfather is dying man. She begins desperately looking for…
Star crossed lovers all right, but this isn’t the Montagues and the Capulets. In fact, far from it … and neither are we in historic Verona. Romeo & Julie is set in contemporary Splott, a district south of Cardiff and concerns two decidedly different 18 year olds. Romy is a single father and school dropout…
