Film

By Michael McNulty Based on a short story written for Playboy by fantasy-horror and sci-fi writer Richard Matheson – perhaps more widely known for his work on The Twilight Zone, and for authoring I Am Legend – Duel began its trajectory towards life as an ABC TV movie of the week when it was picked up by Universal. Steven Spielberg, then in mid-20s and working as a television director, was attached after impressing the film’s executive producer with a rough...

“Male chauvinist pig versus hairy-legged feminist”, that’s how former world champion tennis player Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) pitches the titular exhibition bout between himself and twelve-time Grand Slam champion Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) in this disappointingly conceited biographical dramatisation from Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris. As with Janus Metz’s plodding Wimbledon drama Borg vs. McEnroe, the action is pivoted around what happened off of the court. From Riggs’ point of view that involves playing up...

Finnish National Railways (VR) is bringing Murder on the Orient Express to life on a long-distance passenger train on December 13th. The game is set on a 13-hour journey across the country, from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland, in what is arguably the longest-running escape room in history. "We are a partner of Nordisk Film, the distributor of the film in Finland and we saw a unique opportunity here to utilize the partnership by bringing the film to...

By Jim Mackney Jane, directed by Brett Morgen, is a documentary focusing on the life and groundbreaking work of Dr. Jane Goodall, touching upon her marital life, the raising of her son Hugo, and her latter years. Dr. Goodall’s work with chimpanzees has been widely documented in film and literature, but here her work seems more immediate and engaging than in previous offerings. Jane is an interesting documentary, one that was made slightly fortuitously with the discovery of a treasure...

Some might argue that the 21st century is only reaching the end of its first fifth. However, the growth of cinematography throughout these little-over-a-dozen years is definitely not as debatable. Sure, there have been some disastrous productions, as there are always shades of every pencil colour, but what is undeniable is the fact that we are currently living in an era abundant with talent. Both directors and actors are imperative to create a quality motion picture. Costumes, screenplay and everything...

By Michael McNulty You would find more enjoyment standing in a queue at the post office, ritualistically checking your watch and shuffling a quarter of an inch forward every 15 minutes than watching Mercedes Grower’s film, Brakes.  At 80 minutes, it instils a frustrating impatience that has you begging for the credits to roll.   Late in the film, one of the characters says, “I’ve just been pinned by the most boring person I know,” and you want to reach through...

Set in provincial Brooklyn during the last days of summer, Beach Rats follows Frankie (Harris Dickinson), a 19-year-old who spends most of his time fooling around with his posse of friends and his girlfriend Simone (Madeline Weinstein). He lives at home with his mother (Kate Hodge), younger sister, and bed ridden father who has cancer. Unbeknownst to everyone around him he also messages men on an online chatroom and meets them on the side of the highway for casual sex....

Suburbicon is set in 1957 within a suburban town of the same name. It is the kind of small American town that is synonymous with the work of Douglas Sirk and films like All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind, but it is a setting that has remained popular and has been seen more recently with Far From Heaven and Sam Mendes’ adaption of Revolutionary Road. It is here that we meet the Lodge family, headed up by...

By Jim Mackney There is a moment in Justice League where the central villain Steppenwolf, is shown in close up, nothing unusual about this and in Superhero films this is done to offer a sense of menace and danger. Here, however, it highlights the terrible CGI of Justice League as Steppenwolf ends up looking less like a blockbuster villain and more like a villain from a bargain bin PS3 game. This is not something you expect or want from a monolithic...