Tom Duggins
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Interview: Xavier Legrand, dir. Custody
Xavier Legrand is an actor and director whose Just Before Losing Everything was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. His first feature Custody, a powerful film which explores the anguish and anxiety caused by a violent father, won the Silver Lion at Venice last year. We caught up with Legrand to…
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Film Review: Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion & Disco
★★★☆☆ James Crump’s latest documentary explores the coterie of artists, models and writers who formed around the pioneering fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez. A passionate and romantic figure, Lopez makes for a dynamic subject in a film sadly lacking in narrative excitement. Working alongside his creative partner, Juan Eugene Ramos, Lopez brought an energetic, passionate approach…
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Film Review: The Square
★★★★★ Swedish writer and director Ruben Östlund offers up another skin-crawling, hilarious study of the male ego battling against its own lack of self-awareness with The Square, winner of last year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure won great acclaim for its deliciously awkward portrayal of a young father who…
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Interview: James Erskine, dir. The Ice King
James Erskine is an accomplished director and documentarian who has explored a number of different sporting greats through the medium of film. His latest, The Ice King, tells the life story of John Curry: a pioneer in the world of figure skating, who redefined the sport by incorporating elements of performance art into his routines.…
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Film Review: Loveless
★★★★☆ The breakdown of a marriage is the stuff of many a taught, uncomfortable drama, and Loveless – the latest film from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev – offers a superbly icy portrait of a disintegrating relationship and the intolerable strain that places on the couple’s only child. Zvyagintsev’s previous film, 2014’s Leviathan, was an emotional…
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Film Review: Molly’s Game
★★★★☆ Starring Jessica Chastain as poker princess Molly Bloom, Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut Molly’s Game provides all the quick witted verve and punch you’d expect from the acclaimed screenwriter. The greatest successes of Aaron Sorkin’s screenwriting career – The Social Network and Moneyball – have something of a common thread: true tales of seemingly unremarkable…
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Film Review: Mountains May Depart
★★★★☆ Set across three decades and two continents, Mountains May Depart is an affecting and ambitious tale of social upheaval in modern day China. The opening sequence of Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart shows an energetic young crowd bopping along in a dance class, fittingly enough, to ‘Go West’ by the Pet Shop Boys. The…
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Film Review: Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami
★★★★★ Sophie Fiennes returns with yet another fascinating character study, blending slick concert footage with impromptu, intimate filming of musician and fashion icon Grace Jones as she darts between America, Europe and Jamaica – a force of vitality and glamour. Because there is no one else quite like Grace Jones, it stands to reason that…
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Film Review: Daphne
★★★★☆ A young chef tries to booze and bang the pain away in director Peter Mackie Burns’ engaging, charming comic drama Daphne. Set in London, in a largely nocturnal landscape of fleeting pleasures and unacknowledged hurts, it makes for a timely study of young angst. Millennials are a sordid bunch, it seems. What with the…
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DVD Review: David Lynch: The Art Life
★★★★★ David Lynch hasn’t embarked on a major film project since the release of Inland Empire back in 2006. Eleven years is a long time to wait for inspiration, but as is made clear in the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, he’s a patient man.After first enrolling at the School of the Museum of…