Film

Review by Leslie Byron Pitt/@Afrofilmviewer When Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson original left the WWE to become a movie star, it was easy to see him as a star in the same vein as Arnold Schwarzenegger: A heavyweight presence who may not have a decent set of thespian chops, and would do little else but wield large firearms with remarkable ease and walk away from explosions like the coolest guy around. Looking back at Johnson’s Career now that he’s been branded...

By Anna Power Based on the graphic novel by Raymond Briggs, Ethel and Ernest is a love song to his parents, to working class values and to a uniquely English way of life that belonged to a time now gone forever. Touching and deeply personal, the film follows the couple through their courtship in the 1920’s to their deaths in the 1970’s, with a backdrop of the tumultuous and rapidly transmogrifying twentieth century piercing through their suburban ebb and flow...

With Halloween around the corner a new HMV study has been released ranking the scariest horror scenes of all time. The spine-chilling head spin scene from The Exorcist was revealed to be the most frightening moment in the history of horror closely followed by the shower scene in Psycho. Carrie, The Ring and Alien all featured in the top five, with The Shining, Silence of the Lambs and Saw landing in the top ten. Ian Hunter, Professor of Film Studies...

By Leslie Byron Pitt/@Afrofilmviewer A recreational documentary in a similar vein to The Arbour (2010) or Dreams of a Life (2011), Notes on Blindness details us of the grand upheaval taken of famed academic John Hull as he loses his sight days after the birth of his first son. Directors James Spinney, Peter Middleton carefully craft a delicate series of vignettes in which we are informed of Hull’s frank dealings with losing his sight. We trace Hull recruiting a team...

Aside from the daily snubs and the repeated bouts of condescension thrown by urbanites, one of the biggest tragedies about the public's perception of the Big Issue is how misunderstood it is. Did you know, for example, that one of the most offensive things you can say to a vendor is, "here's the money, but keep the paper"? As honourable as you may think that is, by doing so you are demoting that person from being a street vendor into a beggar, which is...

No stranger to controversy, Oliver Stone continues his exploration of personal conflict enmeshed with the political, in his latest film Snowden. Bringing fresh perspective on Edward Snowden - the man, and his whistleblowing on covert civilian data monitoring by the NSA (National Security Agency), the film casts a paranoiac shadow over labyrinthine, secretive government operations resulting in a tense, dramatisation of events. Building on Laura Poitras Oscar winning documentary Citizenfour, the film starts at the now infamous rendezvous at the...

A lot of people are VERY excited about this trailer, the first in a standalone Star Wars series, which operates in the same universe, literally, but does not infringe on the main Star Wars narrative. Disney CEO Bob Iger recently said of it: “We love what we’ve seen”. This is the second trailer for Rogue One, which stars Felicity Jones and is directed by Godzilla’s Gareth Edwards. It is due to be released on 15 December in Australia, and 16...

Have you ever seen a film in which an excessively flatulent corpse falls in love? Unless you've already seen Swiss Army Man, I'm guessing you won't have done. It's almost as if someone in Hollywood has actually been listening to everyone complaining, “Every film is a sequel! There's nothing original anymore! Stop remaking things that are already good!”. At the absolute most you could compare Swiss Army Man to Castaway, in so much as it does involve a castaway. And...

The powerful documentary Still Loved is set to be shown in London at the end of the month to coincide with Baby Loss Awareness Month which runs throughout October. The film has been released in an effort to break the stigma that surrounds the death of a baby, which remains hidden from society and shamefully un-discussed. Each year in the UK over 5,000 parents leave hospital without their baby. One in four pregnancies end in a loss. Still Loved overcomes this silence by showing parents’ stories...