The opening scenes of 7500 are silent, showing airport security footage of a group of people about to board a commercial night flight from Berlin to Paris. Take note of who you are seeing. American pilot Tobias Ellis (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is tasked to transport eighty souls on what is a regular shuttle, the one hour…
A man haunted by his past is forced to face his demons in the slow-moving horror film, The Vigil. Yakov Ronen (Dave Davis) is a shadow of a man in the aftermath of a tragedy that befell his younger brother. He was present; but he didn’t intervene and before he knew it, it was too…
I find Richard Linklater a frustrating filmmaker sometimes. I mean, I love some of his films (School of Rock and Bernie, for example); but can’t get into others (like Boyhood and Last Flag Flying). His latest release here, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, falls into the latter category for me. This weirdly structured and ultimately thin…
Pete Davidson was a bit of an unknown quality for me. I was aware he was on Saturday Night Live, and I’d seen some of his stand-up – experiences that frankly left me nonplussed. But he’s been in a heap of movies, even if most of them haven’t been released here. His latest acting foray,…
Okay, this is a tough one. Shirley is out-there cinema for the dedicated cinephile. If you like a nice logical, linear plot with likeable characters, well, I’m afraid this isn’t for you. Director Jennifer Decker crafts an imagined portrait of the acclaimed writer Shirley Jackson that bathes in both the American Gothic that Jackson championed,…
We get to see very few Scandinavian films outside of film festivals in this country. The Icelandic film industry produces around 5 or 6 films a year, and several directors have gained an international reputation. Recently many major Hollywood productions, including Star Wars: Rogue One and Prometheus, have taken advantage of the country’s strikingly remote…
Moving from cinema releases to Netflix hasn’t really slowed Adam Sandler’s production company Happy Madison. They currently have 14 movies in the pipeline. But the latest HM production to make it to the small screen is The Wrong Missy. This crashingly predictable rom-com fails on just about every level – but completely unpredictably unearths a…
Like his style or not, Spike Lee always has something to say. His latest epic (clocking in at 2 and a half hours), Da 5 Bloods, is no exception. This sprawling exploration of the ties that bind was originally slated for a cinema release; but COVID-19 scotched that. So Lee has released the film on…
A ripping yarn and a grand adventure, The Personal History of David Copperfield delighted me. It highlights just how magnificent a writer Charles Dickens was. The movie (penned by Armando Iannucci and Simon Blackwell, with direction from the former) re-imagines Dickens’ classic ode to perseverance through a largely comedic lens. Copperfield (Dev Patel) narrates his…
The Current War concerns the development of the electric light. But that prosaic premise belies a voyage of discovery, filled with intrigue and subterfuge. The race against time begins in 1880. On the one side is Thomas Alva Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch); and on the other is George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon). Both are men of principle…
