With a double header of Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor nominations at the upcoming BAFTAs and Oscars, Can You Ever Forgive Me? features a wonderful against-type Melissa McCarthy and a never better Richard E. Grant, thick as thieves in their shady dealings of forged celebrity correspondence. Based on Israel's 2008 memoir, Marielle Heller (Transparent) directs…
Mary Queen of Scots is a sumptuous period tale of marriages, murders and betrayals, dramatically pitting the Catholic Scottish Monarch Mary of the House of Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) against her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie), last of the Tudor monarchs of England. The film begins with Mary’s return to Scotland to assume her throne…
For a presidential sure-thing, Gary Hart is not a particularly well or fondly remembered name. In the race for democratic nomination in 1988, Hart spectacularly fell from grace - the true story of Jason Reitman’s new political thriller, The Front Runner. For those that don’t remember, Hart’s presidential run was cut short when The Miami…
Over the last few years, there have been a series of British film releases each January which achieve minor prospects in the awards season and which can be labelled as “shortbread tin cinema”, on account of their historical period aesthetic, lack of flashiness, and a sort of parochial attitude that only appeals to filmgoers over…
Illustration by Thomas Durham. The year began with The Shape of Water and ended with the cinematic debut of Aquaman while in-between was a veritable ocean of variously challenging, unconventional, intelligent and rousingly entertaining features – plus the floating turd of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The convergence of the global media landscape continued apace as…
On a drab tiled floor, a bucket of mop-water is sloshed down a drain; in a moment of unexpected repose, the puddle reflects a window on the world above as a plane glides overhead, visualising a dichotomy between a world of wealthy jetsetters and the more sedate world of the earthbound and the domestic. The…
Eleven months since its Sundance Festival debut, the audaciously high-concept comedy Sorry To Bother You – written and directed by progressive rapper Boots Riley in his feature film debut – has finally arrived in the UK, capping off a banner year for black filmmakers after Jordan Peele’s Oscar win for Get Out, and the phenomenal…
