Film

By Linda Marric The opening scene to Elle is perhaps one of the most shocking scenes you will encounter in recent cinema. The film opens with a brutal rape sequence which will have you ask yourself, what have I let myself in for? Directed by Paul Verhoeven and staring the always brilliant and majestic Isabelle Huppert, Elle is a story like no other. It isn’t so much a social commentary piece, but more of a perverse cautionary tale of intrigue...

Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP Outside of Akira, the odd Studio Ghibli production, and a couple episodes of Dragon Ball Z watched as a child I haven’t really seen much anime. Despite an almost constant supply of acclaimed Japanese animation these films have never quite seemed to have established the audience that many believe they should. A Silent Voice then stands as the next in a long line of anime films hoping to covert English speaking cinema goers to the genre. A Silent...

By Leslie Byron Pitt There’s nothing worse than a film that goes through the motions. Even if a film is considered bad, it usually has something distinguishing about it. Something memorable. What We Become struggles with this for the simple fact that we’ve seen Zombie movies like this before, often with a more distinctive voice behind it. What We Become is a dime a dozen Zombie movie. One that only really stands out because it’s hard to think of another...

By Michael McNulty Maybe you run a weekly Friday Film Night round your place where you invite your friends and screen a film. Only problem is you haven’t got a clue what to screen tonight. Well, worry not, here’s this week’s Forgotten Film Friday pick and it’s a good’un. The Motorcycle Boy Reigns sprayed across a brick wall squeezed between shots of passing clouds opens Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film, Rumble Fish. Coppola jokingly dubbed it an art film for...

When Mike Dean blew the final whistle on life at the Boleyn Ground the thought at the back of everyone's mind was that irrespective of finance or form, life as a West Ham fan was about to irreversibly change. For some that feeling had set in long before Winston Reid scored the last ever goal and the sound of fireworks reverberated across the historic terraces. Mabel, a 100 year-old fan who has been a life-long supporter had woke up that...

By Linda Marric Kelly Reichardt Is fast becoming one of the most iconic director of her generation, her features have been hailed as some of most beautifully crafted and understated pieces of filmmaking of the last decade. In Certain Women, which was adapted from three different short stories by Maile Meloy, Reichardt delves into the lives of three different women living in Livingston, Montana and brings us a unique look at rural America from a fresh perspective. Earlier this week,...

By Linda Marric One minute into the credits of Kong: Skull Island and you can’t help but smile, because you know this isn’t going to be one of “those” monster films with unending battle scenes and little else. So if you were expecting a testosterone drenched blockbuster a la Michael Bay, rest assured that this is nothing of the sort. Produced by the same team who brought us Godzilla (Gareth Edwards, 2014), Kong: Skull Island not so much borrows but...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel A montage near the end jumps through a diverse collection of fans explaining what heavy metal band X Japan means to them. Aside from adoration in their homeland, others from around the world express admiration, ranging from people who used their music to deal with dark emotions to an elderly woman attending her first concert since Elvis. It’s a hint of what could have been in a shallow and otherwise amiable documentary that skates through the...

Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP It takes some time to adjust to the accents of the characters in Trespass Against Us, not because they are difficult to understand, but because gangsters and criminals are not meant to sound like this. The rural west of England is not the traditional location for such dramas, which are much more accustomed to bleak inner city areas. There is a strange juxtaposition between the idyllic countryside and the brutish behaviour of the Cutler family. The...