Film

The critic Roger Ebert once said, “movies are like a machine that generates empathy”, which perhaps explains why so many of us feel compelled to turn towards the loving embrace of cinema to console us in times of great trouble. Yet somehow, in much the same way he has seemingly managed to encroach on every other sphere of our existence since deciding to run for President, Donald Trump has managed to ruin this most comforting of pleasures too. These days...

Tim Hunter has, over the past 30 odd years, worked predominantly in television, directing episodes for stand out shows including Mad Men, Scream, and everything in between.  However, in the 1980s he directed several feature films, one of which was none other than the eerily dark, nihilistic teen drama, River’s Edge. The film is based on a the real life murder of Macy Renee Conrad, who was strangled to death by 16 year old high school student Anthony Jacques Broussard,...

My Life Story, directed by Julien Temple, is a soaring success.  It is the filmed stage show of Graham “Suggs” McPherson, frontman for the iconic 80s’ Ska-Pop band, Madness. Coming in the form of a one man show that expertly blends archival footage, animation and dramatized re-enactment, the show is an autobiographical account of Suggs’ life story structured loosely around his quest to discover more about the father he never had. It is a personal, sprawling spoken word documentary that...

Pixar changed the game for animated cinema when they emerged from under the shadow of Disney back in the mid-90s, and have since gone on to make a string of high-calibre films that have been defined their visual vim and thematic intelligence, achieving significant worldwide success. Nearly everyone has a favourite Pixar film, whether you grew up on the early Toy Story films, or were first introduced to Pixar via the Day-Glo world of Inside Out. These are films built...

There was a time when the release of a new Pixar film was looked upon by critics and consumers alike as something of a cultural event. But recent years have proved there to be major chinks in the animation powerhouse’s creative armour; the shameless merchandising of the Cars franchise; the growing dependence on sub-par sequels to fill the slate; the ever-greater reliance on a specific series of narrative & thematic tropes. Though their output remains consistently entertaining, the heartfelt intellect...

The Commuter is the latest in an increasingly long line of action films to have starred Liam Neeson. This time around he plays Michael MaCauley, a proud family man and insurance salesman, who takes the same train to and from work every day. On the train home one day a mysterious woman called Joanna (Vera Farmiga) sits opposite him and offers him $100,000 if he can identify the person with a bag containing illegal goods. While at first unsure whether...

As Steven Spielberg’s latest feature film, The Post, makes its way onto our screens this week, the parallels that can be drawn between the story it tells and the current political landscape won’t be lost on anyone. Centring around the events which led to a war between the Nixon administration and a huge chunk of the American press, the film seems to deliberately play on our collective hankering for the golden age of investigative journalism, and rightly highlights the need...

Directed by Greg Barker, former freelance journalist and war correspondent turned documentary filmmaker, The Final Year plays out like a swansong turned tragedy that documents the Obama administration’s final year in office. Centred on Obama’s foreign policy team and their efforts to shift America’s overseas approach away from a militarised one and, instead, towards one that is founded in engagement and diplomacy under the shared belief that American exceptionalism is rooted in, “what we stand for and how we act,...

Perhaps lacking the same bite as Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Wes Craven’s 1991 film, The People Under the Stairs, is still a sharp commentary on American socio-economic disparity.  Disguised behind a veil of horror and comedy, Craven crafts a deeply satirical view of post-Reagan America that finds renewed potency in the age of Donald Trump. Fool (Brandon Quintin Adams), a young African-American boy, lives in a run-down flat with his mother and sister in a rough neighbourhood.  Junkies crowd the...