Film Reviews

Steven Soderbergh, once dubbed the poster boy of the Sundance generation by legendary critic Roger Ebert, makes his return from a short-lived ‘movie retirement’ with Logan Lucky – a wacky, redneck, Ocean’s Eleven-esque crime comedy. Soderbergh enlists a trio of brawny heartthrobs - in the shape of Daniel Craig, Channing Tatum and Adam Driver – in an attempt to guarantee his comeback doesn’t fall short of the mark, and it almost pays off. Tatum, more rotund than ever, is a...

By James Mackney Move aside Minions, for 'Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie' is the family film of the summer. It has everything: fart jokes, an arch villain who looks like a cross between Albert Einstein and Professor Weetos, sly and silly cultural references and a caped-crusader - in just his underpants! It is a film that unashamedly celebrates the sheer creativity of children’s imaginations. Within the first 10 minutes there is a joke about Uranus being a gas giant....

By Michael McNulty Director of Heli, Amat Escalante’s latest offering is a strange cocktail of genres, part social-realist drama and part erotic, magical sci-fi. Set in the Mexican city of Guanajuato, The Untamed draws inspiration from a homophobic newspaper clipping about a gay hospital worker who was murdered. Centring on a working class family, Alejandra (Ruth Ramos), mother of two is the wife of Ángel (Jesus Meza), a sexually repressed homosexual who is having an affair with Alejandra’s brother Fabián...

By Anna Power There’s no doubt that this best-selling teen romance novel now brought to the screen is a film of two distinct halves. The first is a very pleasant teen love story, which charms and captivates, the second sees the onset of a plot about to take a nose dive into territory that’s a whole lot tougher to swallow - no matter how hard you try. They say that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down and...

The Century 16 massacre of 2012, where a lone gunman, James Holmes, entered a packed cinema auditorium in Aurora, Colorado during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises and began shooting – leaving 12 people dead and another 70 injured – forms the stimulus from which indie writer/director Tim Sutton soulfully sketches a portrait of suburban malaise in this hauntingly existential examination of contemporary America. It’s best to ignore the blunt tactlessness of the title; Sutton’s manner is measured...

By James Mackney Films about artists and the process of creating art, especially portraiture, can be a risky prospect. There is a fine line between creating an engaging piece of cinema and with that of making the audience feel like they too are sitting in the subject’s chair for hours on end. Stanley Tucci has created a chamber piece, focusing on one of the final works of Swiss-Italian artist, Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush). The subject of the artist’s final portrait...

Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP For all our dreams of packing our bags and travelling around the world for the most part they remain just that – dreams. Of course we have friends who have gone to exotic countries on their gap years, or who have had a holiday of a life time but before long they have returned to their normal lives. To seemingly abandon everything and set out on your own odyssey seems to be all but an impossibility....

Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP A lot has changed since Terminator 2 was first in cinemas. The channel tunnel opened, Friends had its first and last episode, James Cameron went on to make the two highest grossing films of all time, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected as Governor of California twice. With every re-release it’s natural to wonder if the film will have the same effect all those years later and this is no exception. Set in 1995, Terminator 2 follows...

By James Mackney Spider-Man: Homecoming signals the second attempt by Sony Pictures to re-boot the Spiderman franchise in 15 years. I admit to feeing somewhat exhausted by the franchise, having seen all bar one of the Spider-Man films, and this latest instalment in the line-up left me cold and frustrated. Spider-Man: Homecoming has attempted to be a Superhero film as if it were directed by John Hughes. Sadly, there is none of the playfulness of The Breakfast Club nor is...