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FrightFest 2021: Programme highlights
Horror is back! While football never did manage to make it home, after a 2020 edition of Arrow Video FrightFest rolled out entirely online, 2021’s event returns for an in-cinema event at the Cineworld Empire Theatre, Leicester Square. Five days of world horror cinema awaits. The past 18 months have been hell for us all. And if…
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Three slam dunk sports movie classics
Hollywood loves sports films, and some fantastic movies have graced the silver screen over the years. From football to baseball, boxing to hockey, sports movies continue to be incredibly popular with movie theatre-goers globally. However, not all sports movies are created equally. Some legendary movies garnered interest even from people who do not follow the…
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Film Review: Pig
★★★★☆ What would you get if you crossed John Wick with The Truffle Hunters? In his feature debut, American director Michael Sarnoski has the answer to a question that no one asked. As a result, Pig offers something strangely tender and even sometimes lyrical, wrapped up in the trappings of a noirish thriller that is…
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Film Review: Censor
★★★★★ David Cronenberg once said: “Censors tend to do what psychotics only do: they confuse reality with illusion.” Censor takes Dave Deprave’s theory for a creative spin, in doing so sending its lead, a female film examiner with a tragic past, down a rabbit hole of madness. If you’re expecting a retro pastiche akin to Grindhouse, with…
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Film Review: Sabaya
★★★★★ “Daesh [ISIS] feel they have the right to use sabaya girls as personal slaves. To rape them and sell them.” The horrors of life for Yazidi women inside the refugee camp of Al-Hol are laid bare in Kurdish-Swedish filmmaker Hogir Horiri’s devastating documentary, Sabaya. Almost numbed by the never-ending atrocities he has witnessed and…
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Action! The importance of communication in filmmaking
Film productions are incredibly complex operations. This is true whether you’re filming a commercial, a TV show or a movie. You’re not just working with the stars or the models. You’re also directing dozens or hundreds of extras, lighting crews, production crew and support personnel. All of these people may be splitting their time between…
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Film Review: WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn
★★★★☆ Premiering at SXSW back in March, Jed Rothstein‘s documentary narrates WeWork’s and its co-founder Adam Neumann’s complex journeys through the worlds of real estate, co-working and technology. Capturing Neumann’s fall from grace, this film illuminates some of the most hard-hitting professional and social anxieties of our age. Founded in 2010, the company’s name, made…
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Film Review: New Order
★★☆☆☆ Following its premiere in Venice last year, Mexican director Michel Franco’s sixth feature receives its UK release this week. Depicting a fictional uprising in an unnamed Mexican city, New Order ably depicts the terror, confusion and violence of political revolution, but stops short of offering meaningful context. Nestled amidst a wealthy suburb, young couple…
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Film Review: CODA
★★★☆☆ Ticking all of the small-town America coming-of-age drama bingo boxes, there’s a significant twist to the full house of Siân Heder’s CODA. Ruby Rossi, played by British actress Emilia Jones in a standout performance, doesn’t quite yet know who she is or what she wants from life. She wears baggy check shirts and a…
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Film Review: Now, Voyager
★★★★☆ Travel – broadening the mind, personal horizons and a lonely woman’s perceptions of self – is one of many tonics taken by an irrepressible Bette Davis as the traumatised Charlotte Vale in Now, Voyager. Irving Rapper’s 1942 film, shining in crisp, crystalline monochrome, after a 2K digital restoration by Warner Brothers, returns to UK…
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