Film

It is a testament to Margot Robbie’s impressive acting talent that from the moment you set eyes on her in I, Tonya, that you instantly know that you are in a pair safe hands. Directed by Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl, United States of Tara) the film recounts the extraordinary story of how one of the most talented American figure skaters of all time suddenly found herself at the centre of one the biggest scandals to ever hit...

For many, the story of John Curry will be an unfamiliar one, but James Erskine, the director behind 2013’s Battle of the Sexes, intimate documentary, The Ice King, about the “best ice skater in the world,” is a graceful success. John Curry’s story begins like many, in his childhood, when his aspirations of becoming a ballet dancer were hobbled by his strict, working class father who refused the boy his dream to dance on the grounds that it was “unmanly.”...

While we may spend most of our lives planning for retirement and old age even the best prepared can be faced with unexpected challenges. This is just the situation that Sandra (Imelda Staunton) finds herself in. While her husband of 40 years Mike (John Sessions) celebrates his retirement following a successful law career, she discovers that he has been having an affair. Seeking refuge she visits her estranged sister Bif (Celia Imrie), who she hasn’t seen in over a decade....

George Nolfi’s tale of the ‘birth’ of Bruce Lee (Philip Ng), set in an evocative representation of 1960s San Francisco is at best an entertaining B-movie and at worst a straight to video bargain bin flick. The story focuses on a pre-legend Lee and his fight with Shaolin Master Wong Jack Man (Yu Xia), the account of which is heavily fictionalised, and although the East meets West showdown did actually occur, very few people were privy to it and the...

Not even a compelling central performance from Ruth Wilson is enough to save Clio Barnard’s rustic, social-realist melodrama, Dark River, from being the first major cinematic upset of the 2018 calendar. Having made such a huge impact with her first two films – bracing docu-hybrid, The Arbor, and her acutely poetic follow-up feature, The Selfish Giant – Barnard has now turned her attention away from the inner-city existence, and instead settled her focus on the Britain’s pastoral hinterland; following in...

Daniel Fitzsimmons’ debut feature is scuppered by an undercooked script and half-baked ideas that fail to ignite any real feeling in sci-fi psychological drama, Native. After a telepathic alien hive race discovers a strange musical transmission being emitted from a far off planet, two scientists, Cane (Rupert Graves) and Eva (Ellie Kendrick), are sent on a mission to uncover and colonize its source. Science-fiction struggles in a difficult balancing act of having to find that sweet spot between being an...

Over the years, as it has accumulated two sequels and as Robert Rodriguez’ career has grown and diversified, El Mariachi’s backstory has arguably become better known and more important than the film itself. I had seen Desperado and Once Upon A Time In Mexico, but until watching it to research this piece, I had never seen El Mariachi before, but I was very much aware of the legend of how it was made, with Rodriguez literally selling his blood in...

Warning: this review contains a possible spoiler The premise of Polish 'documentary' You Have No Idea How Much I Love You (original title: Nawet nie wiesz, jak bardzo cie kocham) is that an adult daughter Hanna (Hanna Maciąg) and mother Ewa (Ewa Szymczyk) are seeing renowned therapist Bogdan De Barbaro after growing apart since Ewa's divorce and increasingly distant behaviour hurt Hanna deeply. Visually the film is deliberately barren, alternating between close-ups of the trio in a windowless, colourless room. This...

Sometimes, it can feel like a hard slog looking for a great film to enjoy on a Friday night after a long week.  More often than not we turn to the cinema to get our film fix, and rightly so, because every week, especially at the moment, you’re pretty much guaranteed to find something interesting.  The sad truth is, if you come from a family like mine, when you’re not donning your best dress for a Friday night outing to...