Film

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...

I was just the right age (8) when the cartoon series Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles started being shown on British TV (the word ‘ninja’ was removed from the UK version of the show, in one of many hilariously petty incidents of censorship that dogged the franchise on these shores). I quickly became an obsessed fan. I watched the show religiously, I had the toys, I would play Turtles with my friends and my four year old brother, my Mum even...

In 2011, the Nobel prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk spoke out about the “marginalisation” of non-English writers, about the ‘near-invisibility’ of writers in languages other than English, and about the persistent shortage of translations. He also criticised the response of British and American literary critics, who he said perceived him in narrow terms defined by his nationality. In short, he complained about the western world’s dominance over literary culture. But has anything changed since then? In an exclusive Q&A, The...

Shot on an iPhone7 Plus, and costing just over $1 million to make, Steven Soderbergh’s latest feature film Unsane is a ballsy & brave foray into thriller territory from a director who has never been afraid of pushing the boundaries, and making do with what is available to him in the pursuit of innovative projects. Staring Claire Foy (The Crown) as a young woman who finds herself involuntarily committed to a mental institution, Unsane manages to offer a truly riveting,...

Fans of watching big robots and Kaiju-style monsters hitting each other repeatedly, destroying everything around them for good measure, rejoice! Everyone else, you might want to sit this one out, because if you were expecting anything resembling a coherent story from the follow up to Guillermo del Toro's 2013 blockbuster behemoth Pacific Rim, then you will be sorely disappointed. Directed by Steven S. DeKnight, and starring John Boyega - who incidentally is also credited as producer on the movie -...

Kore-eda Hirokazu intrigues with his investigative crime drama, The Third Murder, but the film falls prey to contrivances that sell it short. When Misumi (Yakusho Kôji), an employee at a food packaging plant, confesses to the murder of his boss, hot-shot lawyer Shigemori (Fukuyama Masaharu) is brought on to take his case. Charged with murder & burglary, and facing the death penalty, Shigemori wants to plea the case down to murder and theft and win his client the lesser sentence...

In Have a Nice Day, Liu Jian has created a world of multiple dimensions in the 2D renderings of a seedy southern China fringe town where lives intersect over a bag of cold hard cash. A suitable alternative title for this pulpy, crime-caper animation would be, “In the Mood for Money.” The story is simple, and the comparisons rife. When Xiao Zhang (Zhu Changlong), a low rent gangster existing on the bottom rung of the criminal ladder, robs underworld kingpin,...

While those of you on this side of the pond are unlikely to be familiar with A Wrinkle In Time: Madeleine L’Engle’s seminal YA novel, originally published in the early 60s, and the first instalment in her highly lauded ‘Time Quintet’ series. Over in America the book is something of a childhood mainstay, studied in classrooms for more than fifty years now, and beloved by many for its intellectual & emotional underpinnings. This warm-hearted and well-intentioned adaptation from Ava DuVernay...

We film fans often complain about the lack of originality in what the American film industry puts out. One major focus of this irritation tends to be the Americanised remake. At times it can seem like whenever we see an interesting film in a foreign language it is only a matter of time before some studio will come along to reshoot it in English, often while ironing out all the things that made it challenging and interesting - all the...