Film

The 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy cast a long shadow over the second half of the 20th century and as its 30th anniversary approached there were several films that looked, some more directly than others, at its lasting echoes. In 1991 we had Oliver Stone’s conspiracy fueled JFK, late 1992 brought the still underseen Love Field, and with it an Oscar nomination for Michelle Pfeiffer. In The Line Of Fire isn’t directly about the assassination, but it figures...

Author’s Introduction When I was young, my parents were pretty strict about what I was and wasn’t allowed to watch. My viewing had to remain within appropriate age boundaries. I couldn’t get into higher certificate films at the cinema or rent them on video because at 15 I still looked like I was about 12. Then we got a VCR, and I figured out how to set the timer and started delving with a vengeance into films my parents would...

There is something undeniably beautiful about the lush greenery that surrounds the Pacific Northwestern city of Portland. It is here in a large public park that Will (Ben Foster) and his teenage daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) live. Will is a war veteran who tries to escape the pressures of modern life and his PTSD through living in the wild. He is a very adept camper and they both live a comfortable existence in the woodlands. Perhaps inevitably, they are one...

Part-time sailor and full time wandering bum Tami Oldham (Shailene Woodley) runs across rugged older man Richard Sharp (Sam Claflin) while moving through Tahiti. The pair hit it off, and after some happy years together find themselves alone on a boat crossing the Pacific from Tahiti to San Diego. Hurricane Raymond strikes, and what should've been a pleasant sail becomes a desperate attempt at survival. While Adrift hits the beats in a workmanlike manner there isn't enough separating this true...

Isabel Coixet adapts The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel of the same name, in her latest Goya award-winning film. Coixet crafts an interesting film, one that curiously marshals satisfaction and frustration.  Despite its predictability, it remains ambitious in its scope, and touches on subjects that feel both timely and important. It’s 1959.  The location, a nondescript British coastal town, dreary, stiflingly small and populated by narrow-minded, conservative townsfolk.  Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), a middle-aged widower whose husband was killed in the...

How do you approach making a follow up to a film that didn’t need a follow up? Do you stay true to the themes and tone of the original or forge a new path across the Mexican desert? Stefano Sollima’s Sicario 2: Soldado opts to stay true to what made the first film so unexpectedly brilliant. The preceding film had been a taught, atmospheric thriller as Denis Villeneuve guided the audience through two hours of miserable, brilliant action. The fact...

In his debut feature as director, actor Stephen Moyer (True Blood, The Double) offers a decently put together and beautifully acted family drama which seems to tick all the right boxes thematically, but sadly fails to completely convince due to its overwrought and slightly-too-meandering screenplay. Written by actor turned screenwriter Denis O’Hare (True Blood, American Horror Story), The Parting Glass follows a day in the life of a group of adult siblings and their father, as they come to terms...

Last week I talked about Jurassic Park and how, at 11, it felt like my movie. Sleepless in Seattle isn’t that. It’s my mum’s movie. I honestly don’t know where I got the movie bug, none of my family are cinephiles. My parents, generally speaking, like their movies safe. I used to have to assure my mother that a film would have a happy ending if there was even the tiniest bit of suspense during it. My folks are great,...

Fatih Akin’s new German drama about a woman hellbent on seeking revenge after the murder of her family is a rather contrived, facile and at times overly melodramatic production that could have easily benefited from losing some schmaltz in favour of a more nuanced narrative. Staring Diane Kruger and co-written by Akin (Soul Kitchen, Goodbye Berlin) and screenwriter Hark Bohm, In The Fade presents an interesting enough premise, but sadly falls at the first hurdle by failing to come across...