Film

By Clarisse Loughrey  @Clarisselou  The cultural consensus has been slowly letting the bar drop on rom-coms for years now. In some strange parallel to Two Night Stand’s own recently dumped lead, whose all-consuming sexual frustration leads her to pursue the very first dude who doesn’t reply to her online dating messages with “sup girl?”, the very existence of a rom-com which doesn’t come across as outwardly offensive to our core ideals somehow feels like a cinematic triumph. That is to...

By Sam Inglis  @24FPSUK  24fps.org.uk I never met my great grandfather, he died some years before I was born, but watching I'm Alright Jack I wished I could have seen it or at least discussed it with him, because I'm sure it would have struck a chord with him. In some ways it did with me, but in other ways it has definitely become dated over the 56 years since its release. Set in the early 50's, before Britain had...

 By Stephen Mayne @finalreel It seems we are firmly in the season of Alan Turing. But while Benedict Cumberbatch is off picking up awards for his imitation of the man, Alex Garland’s directorial debut is interested in the ideas. Taking the famous Turing test that sets out what a machine has to do to demonstrate consciousness, Garland’s paranoid slice of future phobia is a slick and engaging thriller that can’t quite reach the cerebral heights it shoots for. Garland is...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle Funeral-speech writer Paul (Stephane Guillon) in Vincent Lannoo’s dark comedy Paper Souls (Les Ames De Papier) brings to mind Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Like Olivia Paul is consumed by grief and as such has chosen to cloister himself away, shutting himself off from any sort of romantic interest. Since the death of his wife five years prior Paul’s socialisation it seems has been limited to his next door neighbour and best friend the cantankerous archivist...

By Darryl Griffiths @legallyBOD  'There are no two words more harmful in the English language than good job.' Regardless of our chosen fields, many of us have been exposed to the idea of a 'mentor' as we strive to reach the pinnacle of our professions. Guiding us. Driving us. Some, heavy on sentimentality as they nurture. Others, toeing the line between firm and fair. Finally, we have the morally questionable drill sergeants, brimming with squirm-inducing bile that rings and sporadically...

By Emma Silverthorn  @HouseOf_Gazelle Like Joanna Hogg’s first two feature films Exhibition (2013) is a spot-on meditation focused on British middle-class mores. However this time, instead of sending her characters on holiday, she shows them within their natural environment. Their home-an ultra modernist design by architect James Melvin to whom the film is dedicated-is as the director says, ‘very much the third character in the story.’ But after twenty years of living within this unique creation artistic couple D-played by...

By Stephen Mayne @finalreel Clint Eastwood has never been for messing around. His 34th film as director opens looking up the barrel at a bulky Bradley Cooper, and down the scope at a mother and child Cooper’s Chris Kyle is going to have to kill. American Sniper seems an unashamedly patriotic film, sometimes painfully so, but it’s also much subtler than that. Kyle is a patriotic warrior driven beyond sensible limits to serve his country, and it nearly destroys him...

By Emma Silverthorn @HouseOf_Gazelle As the year that marks the centenary of World War One comes to a close the expected glut of films documenting that period has not manifest. James Kent and Juliette Towhidi’s adaptation of Vera Brittain’s doorstop of a memoir Testament of Youth standing alone as the most high profile WW1 film of the year. The film is a tear-jerker, has some lovely moments visually, (one scene that was particularly striking was a shot of a Paul...

By Kit Power  Film Editor @TLE_Film Following on from his success with Dallas Buyers Club Jean-Marc Vallee directs Wild, a tale of grief, hurt and healing, literally one step at a time. Reece Witherspoon gives a striking performance as novice, lone-hiker Cheryl Strayed (based on her memoir) who undertook the precipitous 1,100 mile journey through the wilderness as the ill-thought-through solution to a car-crash rock bottom, resulting in the breakdown of her marriage and subsequent divorce. Donning freshly pressed hiking...