Film

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...

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...