Film

Pre-teen Barbara (Madison Wolfe) defends her sleepy new-jersey town from the perils of menacing giants whilst struggling with her own personal trauma in Anders Walter’s fantasy-drama debut feature, I Kill Giants. Directed by Anders Walter and coming from comic book writer and penciller Joe Kelly’s (whose previous work includes involvement in Marvel comic heavyweights Deadpool and X-men) graphic novel of the same name, I Kill Giants, like a cool drink of water on a hot day, is a refreshing piece...

High concept was a buzzword in 90s Hollywood, and they don’t get much higher than Indecent Proposal’s. David and Diana (Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore) are high school sweethearts who have been pretty happily married for seven years. Things seem to be going well; she’s in real estate, he’s an architect and they’ve just started building their dream house. Then the recession hits and, down to a borrowed $5000 and with the bank calling in the loan and about to...

The classics of his heyday – the Terminators and the Predators – are always going to be the titles that people reflect upon of when they think of the name Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it is arguably in the years since returning to the big screen after his extended political absence that we’ve seen some of the Austrian Oak’s more interesting works. By contrast, this intensely soporific screwball comedy from SNL alum Taran Killam (who writes & directs here) is unlikely...

While talking dogs have long been a cinematic gimmick, they have never been as affectionately rendered as in Wes Anderson’s latest animation Isle of Dogs. The film is set 20 years in the future and takes place within a dystopian Japan. Following an executive decree from Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura), all dogs suffering from canine flu are exiled to a remote island where decades of rubbish have been dumped. When the Mayor’s adopted nephew Atari (Koyu Rankin) sees his loyal...

J. K. Simmons stars in this heartfelt indie-drama focusing on loss and grief. Simmons plays Bill Palet, an ageing Maths teacher and recent widower after 30 years of marriage. Bill’s adolescent and sensitive son Wes (Josh Wiggins) is also struggling to come to terms with his mother’s sudden and early death. They uproot their lives in San Francisco and travel to Los Angeles where Bill has taken a job at a private school run by his old college friend Paul...

2045 AD. The deceased James Halliday (Mark Rylance) has left his massive fortune inside his defining creation: OASIS, the massive virtual universe people use to escape from the crumbling real world. Halliday left clues on how to inherit his worth that are related to his own insular upbringing, so only the most obsessed with 80's video games and films will find the needed 'Easter egg'. It is up to the ordinary 'gunters' to find it before the monopolistic IOI, who...

Nickolas Bird and Eleanor Sharpe’s documentary, MAMIL: Middle Aged Men in Lycra, about middle-aged male cycling enthusiasts is no tour de force. Coming from directing duo Nickolas Bird and Eleanor Sharpe, MAMIL, which divides its time between the many physical iterations of its acronym (Middle Aged Men In Lycra) dotted across the globe, is one of those rare films that keeps you glued to the screen in sick fascination, and not because it stars a cast of middle aged men...

With the plethora of boxing films that get released each year, it would have been easy for actor turned writer-director Paddy Considine to have produced a film comprising of genre tropes and clichés. Forgoing our usual expectations, Journeyman looks at the lasting injuries that can be obtained in the ring and the often overlooked challenges they create. The film follows Middleweight Champion Matty Burton (Paddy Considine), who is nearly at the end of his career and has one last fight...

Part eco-documentary, part sociological examination, Mike Day’s The Islands and the Whales uses the controversial whale hunting tradition of the Faroese as a diving board to plunge headfirst into the isolated, North Atlantic community of the Faroe Islands. Through an intimate, fly on the wall approach, Day follows the everyday lives of a community whose existence on the windswept archipelago, defined by its rugged, raw landscape, is at a crossroads as they struggle to keep up with a fast changing...