Film

Jurassic Park became the highest grossing film of all time when it was released in the summer of 1993. Its impact has been undeniable, as it ushered in the era of special effect laden blockbusters that we are still witnessing to this day. The original may have been followed by two disappointing sequels but the series roared back into life in 2015 with Jurassic World and returns once more with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The problem with the franchise’s sequels was that they were...

I have been finding many of the more political films I’ve been watching for this series more relevant than I’d like, and Romper Stomper, sadly, doesn’t feel like an exception in that respect. Neo-nazism is again on the rise, enabled and encouraged by the so called Alt Right. Much of this rise is online, but we have seen it, in the UK, in Charlottesville, and in Dylann Roof’s attack in Charleston becoming an ever more present and dangerous issue on...

In his latest feature film L’Amant Double, prolific French director Francois Ozon offers a fantastically bonkers premise that’s likely to bewilder and enchant audiences in equal measures. Playing with classical thriller tropes, and with a heavy dose of Gallic eroticism added for good measure, the film owes more to Hitchcock and Cronenberg than to the director’s more recent offerings. Freely adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’s novel ‘Lives Of The Twins’, L’Amant Double stars Marine Vacth as Chloe, a former model...

Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager is a well-crafted documentary that focuses on both Robson’s football and personal life. So much so that the film does not open with a typical, fawning introduction but instead we are given a detailed and grisly account of the invasive cancer surgery Robson went under shortly before landing the job as manager of Barcelona. Robson is instantly set up as fallible and, in a genre, where reverence so often collapses into gushing hyperbole, it...

It would be far too easy to sneer, mock and feel a little exasperated by its saccharine sweet narrative, but Bill Holderman's new romantic comedy Book Club remains one of the most groundbreaking films of its genre, regardless of how contrived or predictable it might seem to some. Staring Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen as members of a book club who find a new lease of life thanks to the introduction some unlikely new reading material,...

I was always a movie guy. We had consoles (a Sega Master System, followed by a Mega Drive) in the house and I did play them, and some PC games, when I was a kid, but gaming was my brother’s thing. Despite that, and despite the fact we never had a Nintendo console, I was very well aware of the Mario Brothers. I had played the games only briefly (and badly) at friends houses, but I knew Mario (played by...

In a colonial-era South America, bureaucrat Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) is trapped in Asunción, continuously rejected transfer by his bosses. In an attempt to break out of his Kafkaesque existence Zama takes part in a dangerous mission to capture bandit Vicuña Porto (Matheus Nachtergaele), on the promise of freedom and glory if he succeeds. In spite of the stifling surrounds closing Zama in, this is a film that can leave a viewer cold. There is a clear...

Sheila Hancock plays the eponymous, Edie in this drab and slow moving film about a woman slowly moving. We see Edie in the first instance as a carer for her frail, elderly husband, George who seems to be nearly completely incapacitated. Her life as we first see it appears to be draining, lacking joy and not filled with the traditional things a potential Grandparents’ life should be filled with such as laughter, fun and love and it is a bleak...

At the beginning of This is Congo a solider says that according to God’s will growing up in the Congo is paradise, but according to man’s will it is misery. The Congo is indeed a beautiful country and this can clearly be seen in the luscious green landscapes of director Daniel McCabe’s documentary. Conflict has engulfed The Congo for more than 20 years with rebel forces constantly at war with the government. Of the 50 rebel groups that can be...