Category: GFF strand – Gala

Black Bear is basically 2 stories about shit men. Excellent acting, scenes full of tension.

Okay, so I saw the trailer for this, and was like, “They’re making a story about the torture and imprisonment of Guantanamo prisoner Mohamedou Slahi, and the heroes are the fucking Americans?!” My thoughts immediately went to the film The Psychosis of Whiteness, and the example of the courtroom drama Amistad, where the torture and…

This is a beautiful film. I loved the family. There is such warmth. I loved the granny most of all. Minari is the story of Jacob and Monica, who chase the American dream by settling down to make their own farm in Arkansas. Their two children David and Anne take to it and love discovering…

A fuck-yeah coming-of-age based on Caitlin Moran’s memoir of being a teenage music critic. A movie about self-discovery, self-invention, self-destruction, self-reflection, and self-reinvention. Johanna from Wolverhampton becomes rock diva take-down artist Dolly Wilde, providing for her broke-ass family and making a new identity for herself. It makes her bold, it makes her sexy, it makes…

Proxima is a film about the relationship between an astronaut and her daughter. Unlike most movies about space and astronauts, it focuses almost entirely on the training and preparation for going into space, which is gruelling. The main character’s journey as she prepares to leave Earth is mirrored in the emotional journey as she prepares…

Hotel Mumbai is a nail-bitingly tense dramatisation of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Now, my main concern about this movie was this that it was going to be a It Shouldn’t Happen To A White Guy movie. This is when a movie is made about an event that affected the lives of hundreds of people…

A biopic of dancer and choreographer Carlos Acosta. Such a beautiful film. It tells his life and journey alongside the actual Carlos Acosta dancing and directing his own pieces based on each period in his life. I just loved this mode of storytelling because with each struggle, you are seeing the actual outcome that they’re…

The Public is an American movie about homeless people occupying a public library one night during winter. Before the occupation starts, the depiction of what it’s like to work in a library is TOO TRUTH. Defo recognisable to anyone who’s worked in one. The occupation starts out of humanitarian need, but becomes politicised during the…

All Creatures Here Below starts out as a road trip crime caper when two simpletons abduct a baby in order to start a new life as a family elsewhere. The light humour gives way to something much darker as the movie goes on. Actually grim as fuck. Bailed on the Q&A because picking over something…

You wouldn’t think you could make a lesbian love story set in 1950s Scotland boring, but somehow Tell It To The Bees manages it. And this is me, someone who could like nothing more than queer women in period dress in raunchy sex scenes. And yet. And what is meant to be a sexy love…