★★★☆☆ Filmed in and around Scotland’s fourth largest city Dundee, Schemers – receiving its World Premiere at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival – makes up for in rough-and-ready charm what it lacks in technical finesse. It’s a film backed by community spirit; Dundee-born David McLean acts as writer, producer Continue Reading
Mumblecore legend Andrew Bujalski’s latest film, Support the Girls, headed by the singularly brilliant Regina Hall, tells the story of a group of young women working at a Hooters-style bar in Texas. We sat down with the film’s director to discuss empathy, understanding, and the liminal spaces of the highway-dominated world in Continue Reading
With some glittering suits and lousy talk, Quentin Tarantino has risen from a video-store geek to a movie-making maestro. His directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs, remains the ultimate tale of a heist gone wrong. The film was also a career-defining turn for Micheal Madsen who dances to Steeler’s Wheel Stuck In Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Jamie Bell is phenomenal in Skin, Israeli-born director Guy Nattiv’s harrowing drama. It’s a performance that requires a certain level of depth and power – something that Bell tears into with astonishing ferocity. The man Bell portrays is Bryon Widner, a real-life – now transformed – neo-Nazi who found Continue Reading
★★★★★ Few films have stood the test of time as well as Nicolas Roeg’s seminal horror Don’t Look Now. Revolving around the omnipresent theme of grief (and adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s short story), the film composes a ghostly melancholic reflection on this profound human emotion. Rereleased by StudioCanal into cinemas Continue Reading
★★★★★ From the first frame to its last, Apollo 11 observes the historic moon landings from a uniquely cinematic perspective. Paying homage to the analogue era by using exclusive footage from the time, transferred digitally from the original 65mm, Todd Douglas Miller’s third feature leaves you in a heady daze Continue Reading
If you didn’t know already, we’re Bertha DocHouse, the UK’s first cinema dedicated entirely to documentaries, and that means we’re absolutely mad about docs like Todd Douglas Miller’s Apollo 11. Rather like the moon landings themselves, some docs feel like they’re once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and this 93-minute archival masterpiece is one Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ The curtain rose on the 73rd Edinburgh International Film Festival last week with music director Ninian Doff’s feature debut Get Duked! (aka Boyz in the Wood). Set in the Scottish Highlands, this inspired mashup of comedy, thriller and social satire is an unexpected delight that really comes alive in its second Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Nine years after Andy said goodbye to Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the rest of his toys, the gang are back at it in another adventure. But after the transcendent third instalment, is another turn on the merry-go-round really worth it? The metaphor of the Toy Story films Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Anthony Woodley’s The Flood follows Eritrean refugee Haile (the extremely impressive Ivanno Jeremiah) on a journey full of hazard over oceans and across borders, as we see him arrive in the UK hoping to find solace and safety. Instead, Haile comes face to face with Wendy (Lena Headey), the hardened immigration officer Continue Reading
★★★★☆ An ambitious debut feature by writer-director Georgia Parris, Mari is a tender, intimate exploration of life and death, expressed through movement and dance. When choreographer Charlotte (Bobbi Jene Smith) discovers she is pregnant and that her grandmother Mari is dying, it turns her world upside down and makes her Continue Reading
Marvel and DC rule the roost when it comes to comic books. Disney bought Marvel Comics back in 2009 and helped to bring the MCU to the forefront of Hollywood entertainment. The DCEU isn’t quite as big but the MCU but still packs a punch in terms of characters and Continue Reading
★☆☆☆☆ The chemistry that Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson forged so effortlessly in Thor: Ragnarok was an unexpected treat in 2017, begging the question “why haven’t we paired these two before?” Unfortunately, Men in Black: International is all too happy to oblige us the answer. For some, that chemistry must have felt like a well Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ After breaking out onto the international film scene with A Fantastic Woman, Sebastian Lelio returns to cinemas with his second English language feature Gloria Bell. A remake of his native Chilean film Gloria, in which starred the ‘Meryl Streep of Latin American Cinema’, Paulina García, Lelio in this outing Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Regardless if you care or not about fashion, it is impossible to ignore. From the somewhat delirious yearly coverage of the Met Gala to the eye-watering amounts of money involved in trade deals between fashion designers and big brands, the world we live in is consumed by it. The Continue Reading