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A Bloody Night in Vegas – Sleepless (Film Review)
BARAN bo Odar’s film Sleepless lives up to its name. All action and froth. Available on Blu-ray, DVD and Download from 11 September, the film opens to an aerial shot of Las Vegas at night. We cut from this calm image of darkness and starry bright lights to two masked figures in the middle of…
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Scene of the Day – Hard Truths in Hell or High Water
THE much anticipated Wind River, starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, arrives in cinemas tomorrow. A must see film. Set on a snowy and isolated Native American Reservation, this crime story marks another impressive outing for writer and director Taylor Sheridan. On the eve of Wind River’s release, it feels fitting to revisit Hell or…
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Elevator Talk: Up and Down in Film
WE HAVE all been in one. That little box that carries you – and whoever you are sharing that space with – up or down. Elevators are an interesting part of modern life. Less so for their everyday function, but rather the situations they can produce. Mundanity, awkwardness, intimacy, isolation, claustrophobia and fear (for those…
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Scene of the Day – The Birdman Shadow
TO celebrate Michael Keaton’s 66th birthday, let us return to the film that helped launch him back into the spotlight (pardon the pun). Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman (2014) is an unusual cinematic experience. With its seemly one-cut visual style, ever-present drumming score, philosophical undertones and playful casting, there are many things to unpick from this…
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Director Francis Lee talks God’s Own Country
FRANCIS Lee’s debut feature, God’s Own Country, is a personal endeavour. Filmed on the West Yorkshire hills he grew up on, Lee’s film tells an unlikely and heartfelt love story between two young men. Johnny (Josh O’Connor), a hard-edged and blunt-tongued young man, is struggling to keep up with the intensive workload on his ailing…
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An Important Uphill Climb – Icarus (Film Review)
IN 2012, one of the world’s most decorated and heroic sportsmen was exposed as a cheat and a liar. The revelations of Lance Armstrong’s doping rocked not only cycling, but the very foundations of sport. Following this, films – like Stephen Frears’ The Program and Alex Gibney’s The Armstrong Lie – looked to shine a…
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Scene of the Day – Interstellar Goodbye
EMER Reynolds’ documentary The Farthest – out in cinemas now – tells the remarkable story of NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Mission. All of this talk of interstellar space got me thinking about Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film, Interstellar. It is an emotional and labyrinthine work that, in typical Nolan fashion, builds to a mind-bending ending. Yet above…
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(Inter)Stellar Documentary – The Farthest
HOW would you fit the entirety of human civilization onto one vinyl record? That was one of many lofty tasks facing NASA ahead of their Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM) in 1977. Taking advantage of a rare arrangement of the outer planets, VIM saw twin spacecraft Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 set off on a unique…
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Unlocked (DVD Review)
IT has been 18 years since Michael Apted directed the world’s most famous spy, James Bond, in The Word Is Not Enough. Unlocked – out on DVD and Blu-ray on August 28 – sees Apted return to the spy genre with a film packed full of enough twists and turns to make M Night Shyamalan…
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Q&A with Una Director Benedict Andrews + Film Review
IT has been a while since a film – outside of the horror genre – made me wriggle uncomfortably in my seat. But Una, an adaptation of well-travelled – and controversial – play Blackbird made me uneasy throughout. But the uncomfortable watch was one worth enduring because the film deals head-on with the difficult and…
