Film

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...

Stéphane Brizé’s adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s novel, A Woman’s Life (Une Vie in French), is a strangely affecting film that circles the sink hole of despair telling the life story of Jeanne (Judith Chemla), a young woman in 19th century France. Recently returned from her convent boarding school, Jeanne begins her adulthood as a well of unbridled hope and joy. There is a child-like innocence to her as she whiles away warm afternoons gardening with her father. With the...

Lili Fini Zanuck’s latest film is a rock-doc that chronicles the turbulent life of Eric Clapton. The connection between director and subject goes back at least a quarter-century with Clapton scoring the only other film she has directed, Rush in 1991. The documentary the pair have created is engaging for the first 90 minutes but ends up losing its way. The film opens with the early life of Eric Clapton, which was in his own words “blissful” until a horrible...

Grief isn’t an emotion that can be easily managed, or simply placed into a box and thrown to the back of the downstairs cupboard. It isn’t an emotion that is fleeting; it lingers, manifesting itself through our actions and often making them appear irrational and suspect. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri explores this idea in a character study that is at times both volatile and devastating. We first meet Mildred Hayes, mother of murdered teenager Angela Hayes, driving alone on...