Film

By Wyndham Hackett Pain It would all too easy to think of The Wailing as the South Korean version of The Exorcist. There is a lot the two films share in common: an uneasy tone, a worried family, a young child possessed by the devil. Yet The Waling is much darker, more unsettling, and stranger than the 1973 classic which shocked audiences with its depictions of the horrors and evil that could beset American suburbia. Set in a small rural...

Just as I was finalising our Kickstarter Campaign for BURN, my team’s short film about a genderqueer woman struggling with her bisexual partner and her Trinidadian father, Sita Balani published “Is it time to say goodbye to the non-binary in gender?” in Open Democracy. After reading it, to say that I did not have reservations about making BURN, although we use the term genderqueer, would be a lie. Balani’s well researched and well argued article made me question my right...

  We're celebrating the release of the excellent teen high school comedy The Edge Of Seventeen staring the luminous Hailee Steinfeld as Nadine. She's the teenager on the edge, navigating her way through the complexities and social anxieties of high school, romance and family drama. It's on general release on November 30th. To Win: Just tweet and follow us at @TLE_Film for a chance to win an Edge Of Seventeen pack including: A branded hoodie, two wristbands, a LED flashlight...

By Linda Marric @Linda_Marric Thirteen years after the original, we finally have a sequel for Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa.   Directed by Mark Waters, Bad Santa 2 is every bit as mean and nasty as the original. Billie Bob Thornton reprises his role as Willie, the lazy, drunk, sex obsessed petty criminal, who we now find in a suicidal state, living a wretched existence with very little prospect. Willie is called upon by his old partner in crime Marcus (Tony...

By Wyndham Hacket Pain “At that time your show was the most important show in the world,” Nas proclaims of The Strech Armstrong and Bobbito Show, which transmitted weekly between 1 am to 5 am on the college radio station WKCR. Interest in the programme reached such heights in the 1990's that there was a black market of bootlegged radio records that went across the USA and the broadcast was even referenced in the Wu-Tang Clan’s iconic song C.R.E.A.M. The...

By Linda Marric  @Linda_Marric Fresh from a very public falling out with the producers of his last project, Dying Of The Light, which he says was taken away from him, Veteran filmmaker Paul Schrader’s is back with an astonishingly bonkers new production which will confuse even some of his most fervent fans. Dog Eat Dog is an ugly nihilist piece showcasing all that is wrong with the world and featuring a group of unpleasant characters with little or no redeeming...

1. The Black Panthers - Vanguard of the Revolution (2015) Stanley Nelson’s two hour long documentary about the Black Panther Party is basically an instruction manual on how to be the vanguard of the revolution. Insightful interviews with prominent members such as Kathleen Cleaver and Elbert Howard, both still activists today, as well as an impressive amount of original footage, show how the movement worked: From their social aid programmes to their media-savvyness to their armed resistance. Without explicitly saying...

By Linda Marric @Linda_Marric Fresh from the highly acclaimed Love Is Strange, Ira Sachs is back with a new production which deals with similar themes of New York real Estate and its devastating effects on human relations. Little Men tells the story of how the gentrification of a formally working class neighbourhood scuppers the burgeoning friendship between two adolescent boys who’s families become embroiled in a bitter rent dispute. Sensitive, introvert Jake (Theo Taplitz) and son of latin American immigrants...

By Anna Power Tom Ford’s long awaited follow up to A Single Man is a tale of heartbreak and revenge on an epic scale. Opulent, toxic and devastatingly dark, Nocturnal Animals’ double narrative unfurls with the slow-drip bitterness of the broken enmeshed with Ford’s mesmerising style, underpinned with a caustic derision of wealth and meaningless materialism. Based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony and Susan, the film opens in the lavish world of art gallery owner Susan Morrow, played brilliantly...