Jim Mackney

Jim Mackney

I am 26 year old freelance audio visual creative and writer. My writing includes film criticism and sports writing. I am also a Media Studies teacher and have been teaching at an inner-city London school for the last four years.

Film Review: Hotel Artemis

Setting films in one place or over one night run the risk of not being able to gain enough depth to the characterisation or theycan feel hemmed in by their own surroundings. Hotel Artemis attempts to tell its storyboth over one night and in one location, drawing the audience in...

Film Review: Incredibles 2

It has taken Pixar nearly 15 years to deliver a sequel to the much-loved Incredibles, which is an eternity in cinema. When Bob “Mr Incredible” Parr (Craig T Nelson), Helen “Elastigirl” (Holly Hunter), Violet (Sarah Vowell), Dash (Huckleberry Milner) and baby Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile) appear on screen, literally seconds since...

Film Review: The First Purge

The First Purge’s marketing campaign caused a stir when it released a teaser trailer in the style of a political advertisement. It riffed on classic Republican adverts and baited Donald Trump’s base, with a narrator asking the question, “What makes America great? The answer's simple, really, Americans make America great....

Film Review: Sicario 2 – Soldado

How do you approach making a follow up to a film that didn’t need a follow up? Do you stay true to the themes and tone of the original or forge a new path across the Mexican desert? Stefano Sollima’s Sicario 2: Soldado opts to stay true to what made...

Film Review: Bobby Robson – More Than A Manager

Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager is a well-crafted documentary that focuses on both Robson’s football and personal life. So much so that the film does not open with a typical, fawning introduction but instead we are given a detailed and grisly account of the invasive cancer surgery Robson went...

Film Review: Edie

Sheila Hancock plays the eponymous, Edie in this drab and slow moving film about a woman slowly moving. We see Edie in the first instance as a carer for her frail, elderly husband, George who seems to be nearly completely incapacitated. Her life as we first see it appears to...

Film Review: Mansfield 66/67

Mansfield 66/67 focuses on the last two years of the Hollywood bombshell’s life and the documentary presents a slightly odd portrayal with much of it focusing on the salacious newspaper column inches that surrounded Mansfield’s final days and her relationship with the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton Lavey....

Film Review: The Young Karl Marx

The Young Karl Marx is directed by Haitian film-maker, Raoul Peck, whose previous work, I Am Not Your Negro - a documentary focusing on James Baldwin - earned him an Oscar nomination. His latest effort is an intense period drama of the early life and work of Karl Marx. The film...

Film Review: You, Me and Him

The term ‘British comedy’ is not one to often conjure much hope and a genre known really for more misses than hits (for me), the latest British comedy to attempt to achieve success is the rather damp squib that is You, Me and Him. Starring actors that have been known...

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