Film

The Last Jedi is in a difficult spot in Star Wars history. The Force Awakens survived by cannibalising the beloved storyline of A New Hope and capitalising on nostalgia. Wisely, The Last Jedi focused less on legacy and more on forging its own path forward in its own small ways. Episode Eight was less of a shock to the system than Rogue One, but a decisive step towards a new vision for the Star Wars universe. Space casino maguffins aside,...

Marc J. Francis and Max Pugh’s documentary, Walk with Me, sets itself up as if it were to be an exploration of a truly interesting character. A title card introduces Thich Nhát Hanh, an exiled Zen Buddhist Monk from Vietnam, who, having relocated to France, has established the Plum Village Monastery. Instead, the film meanders through a slice of life portraiture of monastic living, while failing to offer the audience anything that feels particularly engaging or insightful. The footage, collected...

You can almost hear the faint chorus of “America, fuck yeah!” in the background of Steven Quale’s Bosnia-set, Navy SEALs action-adventure romp. Penned (in part) by Luc Besson, Renegades is a mash-up of Team America and Three Kings without any of the cynicism or irony, and played with the same straight faced, “America the Great” determination of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. A hardened group of all-American frogmen in Sarajevo, during the Bosnian War, learn from a local barmaid, Lara (Sylvia...

Perhaps unsurprisingly, refugees and migration have been popular topics with filmmakers in recent years. Indeed, over the last 12 months there have been a number of excellent projects, notably The Other Side of Hope and Human Flow, which have reflected upon the struggles and experiences of migrant travellers. With Jupiter’s Moon, Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó creatively attempts to add to this discourse. The film opens on the border between Serbia and Hungry, where a number of Syrian refugees are trying...

By Adam Quane Every film has echoes of political torment; every film tells the truth with lies. Naturally, Star Wars: The Last Jedi is no different, but what is a welcome change from the initial trilogy of films is the fact that, for the first time, Star Wars leans and it leans hard. The film reflects the loss of the American Political identity that was established with the election of Barack Obama and serves as a criticism of the arrogance of...

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has never been particularly interested in fact or historical accuracy, and even though he often builds stories around real life figures, they frequently have little in common with those at the heart of the source material. He has previously turned Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg from a goofy university drop out into a spiteful and almost sociopathic character, with fans of the film even accepting Zuckerberg’s claims that Sorkin made a lot of it up. With Molly’s Game...

With Contributions From: Jim Mackney, Sam Inglis, Wyndham Hackett Pain, and Mike McNulty Editor's Intro 2017 was a year to remember, although perhaps not always for the right reasons: Trump, Brexit, the threat of war with North Korea… and let us not forget the ever-present fear that we may soon be facing a significant prosecco shortage. When reflecting on the year in film, however, one’s memories are far more favourable; the shattering sadness of watching A Monster Calls on New...

2017 has blessed the viewing public with some truly outstanding films, including Moonlight and Blade Runner: 2049. The heights of both direction and cinematography have been pushed to their limits, but alas there has to be a flipside. This list is a run down of some of the worst films we’ve seen this year, all of them are terrible in their own way; some are misogynistic, some are puerile, and some are just naff. Justice League (Dir. Zack Snyder) Warner...

With Dunkirk sitting comfortably in many of this year’s top 10 best of 2017 lists, it seems fitting to revisit another great World War 2 film. Stuart Cooper’s Overlord, commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, is a quiet, elegiac tale that took the Special Jury Prize at the Berlinale upon its release in 1975. The film, failing to find distributors, quickly faded and would have disappeared into the annals of film history had it not been for its rediscovery and...