Film

by Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada Girlhood is the story of Marième's journey from obedient child to defiant girl gang member to young adult fending for herself. It is a story of black female teenagers in the suburbs of Paris. It is a story of female friendship. It is a story of strength, of finding your way out. Marième grows up with many restrictions. Her mother is mostly at work, leaving her to look after her two younger sisters. Her older brother...

By Emma Silverthorn  @HouseOf_Gazelle Coming out tales are up my filmic street. I loved the subject treatment in Appropriate Behaviour and The Way He Looks, (though both these films are about much more than sexual discovery), which sadly threw Silent Youth into an especially sad shade. The film details a chance encounter of two lonely boys wandering the streets of Berlin through the night and into the early hours of the morning, an encounter that develops into an awkward romance....

By Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada  The title is misleading. There is no exit for Ling, a lonely, middle-aged woman whom this film follows around her incredibly depressing day-to-day life. Since she rarely speaks to anyone, there is hardly any dialogue, and scenes of her trying to fix the peeling wallpaper of her flat with sello-tape, going to the toilet or staring into space are drawn out exactly as long as they take in real life, on a particularly listless day. Exit...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel Roy Andersson’s films are so uniquely his own it’s hard to reconcile them with the world around us. Yet were anyone to venture into the idiosyncratic Swedish director’s head, I strongly suspect they would reveal themselves as a weirdly precise form of documentary filmmaking. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, the third in his loosely connected “living” trilogy, resembles a world watched from afar by a viewer not completely familiar with the ways...

By Dr Katy Shaw ‘There is nothing in this film you don’t already know’ declares Russell Brand in the opening scene of Michael Winterbottom’s new movie about the 2007-8 financial crisis Emperor’s New Clothes. A joint project between heavy-weights of the directing and comedy worlds, the movie’s main focus is the financial crash of 2007-8 and its consequences, from bankers’ bonuses at HSBC and Citibank, to the Occupy movement, corporate tax-dodging by Vodaphone and Apple, the privatisation of housing and zero hours contracts....

By Miranda Schiller @mirandadadada Zoska is a boyscout, part of Szare Szeregi (the Grey Ranks), a scouting organisation fighting against the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. They mainly do acts of so-called “minor sabotage”, like tearing down a Nazi flag from a public building. With sharp editing and an upbeat electronic rock sound, these scenes evoke classic coming-of-age film boy pranks. But this is quickly contrasted by showing the real danger of these acts. Even tearing down a flag could cost...

By Kit Power The amount of money bankers are paid each year is a hot topic after the financial crisis in 2008 and it’s a topic that Russell Brand is looking into in his new documentary The Emperor’s New Clothes. Statistics compiled by Reuters showed that in 2013 “2,600 employees at British banks or working in London were paid more than 3.4 billion pounds, or an average of 1.3 million pounds each. That is almost 50 times average annual pay...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel What happens when you discover you’re not who you’re meant to be? In that fine Scandinavian tradition, Force Majeure ruthlessly picks apart familial relationships by teasing out a thread and pulling until everything unravels. That it’s done against a beautifully rendered postcard setting and with a wicked streak of dark humour is all to director/writer Ruben Östlund’s credit. The cinema of our northern European friends is particularly good at finding emotional weak points and exploiting them...

By Stephen Mayne  @finalreel The problem with gaudy revenge flicks, the type Liam Neeson has been padding out the pension pot with in recent years, is the need to establish sufficient mythology around the near invincible hero. John Wick neatly sidesteps the issue starting Keanu Reeves’ title character as a living legend while filling in sparse details only when absolutely necessary. Nothing must detract from the wildly kinetic orgy of violence he’s about to embark on. And nothing does. Wick,...