Film

In real life Columbus, Indiana is a rather unassuming small city located in the American heart land. With a population of around 50,000 people it would be easy to overlook Columbus in favour of the larger and more recognisable cities that can be found not too far away. Academic turned filmmaker Kogonada’s debut film can at first seem a little modest but it doesn’t take long to appreciate the depth and wisdom that Columbus contains. The film centres on a friendship between Jin (John Cho), an American living in...

In Venom, Sony’s latest Marvel offering, director Ruben Fleischer and his writing team seem to have completely failed to grasp the fact that the world has moved on from the old superhero tropes of two-dimensional characters and half-baked ideas that relied too often on a lazy premise and even lazier dialogue. This shift in attitude could be attributed to a number of things, but if we’re going to be completely honest, most of it falls back on the way Disney have handled...

The Guilty A few years ago, I said that the acclaimed Locke was essentially radio. Set entirely in a car, with its protagonist having telephone conversations as he drives on into the night, it struck me as something that, whatever its other qualities, imparted nothing extra to us by being presented in a visual format. The Guilty is set entirely in an emergency call centre as Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren), bored by being tied to a desk job, is finally...

Thanks to its towering, khaki cliffs, cinematic volcanoes and long, golden beaches, Hawaii is a filmmakers metropolis. And for that exact reason, this isolated group of 137 islands has been used as a captivating, tropical set in movies for decades - from Jurassic Park and Pirates of the Caribbean to 50 First Dates and Aloha. To celebrate 25 years since the creation of Steven Spielberg's original Jurassic Park, we picked out five of the most famous movie locations in Hawaii. ...

1937. 1954. 1976. 2018. A Star Is Born has had a version for almost every generation of cinema, and the pull of its story can travel across eras with ease. In Bradley Cooper's latest version, he takes the '76 approach of transferring the story to purely music: self-destructive star Jackson Maine (Cooper) stumbles into a back street bar one day in search of more booze. There he comes across a performer in Ally (Lady Gaga) that fascinates him, and one he wants...

True crime is big business at the moment. Documentaries like Making a Murderer, Casting Jonbenet and The Staircase and podcasts like Sword and Scale, Generation Why and Casefile generate large audiences and discussion. There are though certain crimes that transcend the regular true crime audience and pass into the wider pop culture consciousness. The murder of Abby and Andrew Borden, allegedly by Andrew’s daughter Lizzie, is one of those crimes. Since her trial ended in acquittal in 1892 there have...

From the Oscar & BAFTA winning producer of Senna, Amy and Supersonic, comes another feature length documentary portrait of an iconic figure who defined a generation. Born on the 30th May 1980 in Whiston, Merseyside, Steven Gerrard joined the Liverpool FC Academy at age 8. He left 26 years later, having won two FA Cups, three League Cups, one UEFA Cup, one FA Community Shield, one UEFA Super Cup and, in what is widely regarded as one of the most...

Set in the town of Salem, Assassination Nation is a dystopian fantasy about the consequences for four high school girls when their town goes into meltdown, after half of its residents have their text messages and emails hacked and released on to the internet. Because everything is terrible now, we don’t have to look far into fantasy for our dystopian nightmares. The hacking a few years ago of private celebrity photos and the monitoring of prominent people’s phone messages by,...

To mark the 30th anniversary, a statue of Roald Dahl’s beloved fictional character, Matilda Wormwood, has been unveiled facing the man voted the person she would be most likely to stand up to in 2018, President Donald Trump. Inspired by Matilda’s courage and the battle she picks with Miss Trunchbull in the novel, the Roald Dahl Story Company gave the general public the chance to decide who they thought she would be taking a stand against in 2018. Topping that list...