Mm. I really loved Jim Cummings’s first two films, but this is just . . . fine. The trailer had me a bit skeptical but trailers are frequently deceptive. Clearly inspired by the Ashley Madison leak and the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, The Beta Test focuses on a guy at the centre of an attempt to…
Petite Maman is a quiet, gentle film about childhood understanding of grief and mortality. It is about Nelly, who is 8-years-old and has just lost her beloved grandmother. She is very close to her own Mum, Marion, and goes with her to her grandmother’s family home to help clear it out. While playing in the…
Paris, 13th District is a film about a fuckboy and various women he meets. The characters feels very much like twenty-somethings, although the only time I can recall anyone mentioning their age it was in their early 30s. Anyway, you know that thing in your 20s where you’re flatmates and coworkers and friends and lovers,…
Ali and Ava is about ordinary people falling in love. To be honest, it’s actually weird to see a romance set in such realism. No one in this is a vampire, or a model, or a sexually twisted billionaire. In this movie, love looks like what it looks like for most of us, meeting someone,…
Ok, so we all know that I’m not a sports fan, but golf in particular draws my ire as a racist, sexist, elitist game, played almost exclusively by wankers who have a picture of an Audi as their profile photo on Tinder. So I very nearly didn’t go see this movie, which would have been…
A Bonus For Irene is a short film set in a factory in West Germany in 1971. The drama focuses on Irene, a divorced, single mother working in a dishwasher appliance factory. She is pissed off. The factory is roasting, the wages are shit, and they call upon them for overtime like they should just…
I Am Somebody is a short film documentary covering the 1970 strike of hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina. Initially just 400 black women went on strike for equal pay to their white colleagues, a raise in their wage of $1.30 an hour, and an end to derogatory comments made about their sex and race.…
Ok, I lu-huve Jane Campion. I was hoping this would deliver the promise her name brings, and it is so sumptuous, the cinematography, the score. I was a little hesitant about seeing Benedict Cumberbatch as a cowboy. I had dreads about a twangy accent and this pale, cat-faced thespian trying to embody a rugged steerhand.…
Blacks Britannica is a 1970s documentary interviewing working class Black Brits, exploring their analysis of race, class, colonialism and capitalism. It was initially banned on its release for the reasons you’d expect. It’s kinda depressing how much of it remains relevant half-a-century on. And it flags up gentrification, back before it even existed in the…
It’s a Wes Anderson movie, aye? I know some people cream themselves over Wes Anderson, but I very much like his movies on a case by case basis. While people laud their iconic look, this is one of them that’s a triumph of style over substance. That’s fine if you like his style, but I…