Film

By Wyndham Hacket Pain There was potential for a film about a current athlete who has only recently witnessed major success to feel like an EPSN special, looking behind the scenes of their success. No Easy Mile is more subtle than this and contains much more cinematic skill than the average sports documentary. It may not reach the heights of Asif Kapadia’s Senna, but there is definitely an attempt to delve deeper into the achievements of track athlete Mo Farah...

By James McAllistair @jamesmca90 Back in the early 90s, The New Yorker printed a single-panel pasquinade drawn by Peter Steiner, which featured a computer-savvy canine sat a desk, chatting to another who listened from the floor below; “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” read the accompanying caption. Wryly indicative of the anonymity afforded to all those who surfed the web, its publication also held a wider significance – symbolically denoting society’s growing fascination and developed understanding of the internet;...

By Linda Marric @Linda_Marric Moana is the latest big-budget holiday season animation from the team responsible for Disney’s continued renaissance. Directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, who gave us the timeless Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, this charming and engaging adventure has an empowering, life-affirming message with a subject matter that will withstand the test of time. Voiced by Hawaiian actress Auli’i Cravalho, Moana is the daughter of a Pacific Islands chieftain who goes on the quest of a...

By James McAllistair @jamesmca90 As Emma Stone’s Olive Penderghast observed in Easy A, the one thing the movies don’t tell you is “how shitty it feels to be an outcast”. The reality is that kids can be mean, and growing up is no picnic; trying to cement a position for yourself within the social standings of the schoolyard can leave you anxious, sometimes helpless… and as The Edge of Seventeen – screenwriter Kelly Fremon Craig’s admirable directorial debut – recognises, these...

By Linda Marric @linda_marric Spike Lee's adaptation of of the ancient Greek play “Lysistrata” by Aristophanes manages to avoid the usual pitfalls of play to screen adaptations. Chi-Raq is a play on words coined by Chicagoans, based on a statistic showing that more Americans have died from gun violence in the last decade than soldiers in the Iraq war. In Chi-Raq Lee cleverly addresses not only black-on-black gun violence, but also delves into the misogyny of gang culture; it is a...

By Michael McNulty The Western has been one of Americas most durable and popular genres with origins that precede cinema. They are often easily identifiable, concerning themselves with heroic storylines, beautiful landscapes and Stetson sporting cowboys. However, over time the genre has transcended these elements, blanketing itself in different genres and finding new and exciting forms. Here are 5 Westerns that aren’t Westerns, that actually are Westerns. Taxi Driver Enter Travis Bickle (Rober De Niro), Martin Scorsese’s antihero from Taxi...

By Linda Marric @Linda_Marric Miles Teller puts in a robust performance in Bleed For This as Vinny Pazienza, a working class boxing hero from Rhode Island, who against all odds manages to overcome personal tragedy to make it all the way to the top. Written and directed by Ben Younger, the film tells the real-life story behind the headlines of the man nicknamed “the Pazmanian Devil,” for his less than orthodox behaviour in and out of the ring. The 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...