Film

Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today. It’s coooooold out there every day. On Friday we discovered that the winter of 2018 will continue for another six weeks, based on the fact that a Groundhog - a type of large ground Squirrel - saw its shadow. To be honest, it’s probably not the least accurate weather forecasting system we use. I’d wager that if you’re reading this anywhere other than the...

Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca, set in a dystopic near future, is a sleek sci-fi thriller that imagines a world where eugenics dictate people’s standing in society. It was Niccol’s directorial debut, released before The Truman Show - the script for which Niccol’s would earn an academy nomination - and made on a relatively tight budget of $36 million.  It was a box office flop, only recouping roughly $12 million and was poorly received by critics.  However, over the years Niccol’s film continues...

Directed by London Has Fallen writer Christian Gudegas and staring Gerard Butler, Den Of Thieves is the sort of testosterone laden action flick that doesn’t seem to care much about offering anything resembling a coherent storyline, opting instead for a lazily constructed and needlessly meandering narrative, which in the end only succeeds in alienating even the most ardent of action fans. Furthermore, the film falls at the first hurdle by its inability to decide which story it wants to tell,...

Amber (Sibylla Deen) is torn between her older lover Demi (Harvey Keitel) and her devout Muslim family in Bradford. When Demi dies, his driver Donald (Gabriel Bryne) is instructed to kick Amber out the flat she was living in for the adulterous getaways. Against his better judgement, a sympathy for Amber's plight drags Donald into an underworld totally at odds with his unassuming personality. There is an early scene of Amber flouncing around as 'See Line Woman' plays and Donald...

Makala, the new film from French documentarian Emmanuel Gras, is an elegiac, lyrical journey into the heart, soul and determined resilience of a young charcoal producer in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kabwita is a 28 year old Congolese man who, with his wife Lydie and their three children, lives in poverty. They rent a small, ramshackle home in the bush, and although their accommodation is basic, the full weight of their situation is clearly communicated when we see Lydie...

A decade on from their first collaboration, director Paul Thomas Anderson and actor Daniel Day-Lewis reunite for another tale driven by strong personalities, power struggles, and personal obsession. Set in 1950s London, Phantom Thread follows Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), a fashion designer who makes clothes for high society and even royalty on occasion; a meticulous craftsman, with a precise routine and method. One day he meets Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps), a waitress at a sea side restaurant, and is instantly...

“The things you forget,” ruminates Lois Smith’s Marjorie mournfully towards the start of Michael Almereyda’s futuristic contemplation on memory and mortality. Now in her mid-80s, Marjorie suffers from a vascular form of dementia that causes her to regularly lose touch with the memories of her past. Living with her daughter Tess (Geena Davis), and son-in-law Jon (Tim Robbins), she spends much of her time staring blankly into the distance; a vague, indefinable confusion etched into her eyes – reprising her...

Michael Fassbender’s Brandon in Steve McQueen’s Shame is a sex addict locked in a prison of his routine. He spends his days trawling through pornography. His office computer is so flooded with it, it has to be carted off for a deep clean. By night, Brandon picks up women from bars for casual, throw-away sex or screws his way through New York City’s escort listings. Any dead space he fills furiously masturbating in the shower or his office’s men’s room....

Pedro Pinho’s first feature film, The Nothing Factory, is a three hour social-realist epic that’s baggier than a pair of nineties jeans and so overly long that dullness eventually turns into despair. The film takes inspiration from the real life story of a group of factory workers who, in a unique case of experimental self-management, took charge of a lift building factory in Portugal. When the workers of said factory discover machinery being sneaked off premises late one night, panic...