Just out of Beast, which I really loved. Its the story of a woman who escapes her domineering family when she meets and falls in love with a man several rungs below her on the social ladder. So far so good, until he becomes the prime suspect in a series of child murders. What I…
A biopic of Emily Dickinson. This could focus on a number of aspects of Dickinson’s life but focuses on her spirituality and solitary inner life. Because she lived her entire life more or less in her family home, the whole film is basically Cynthia Nixon wandering round a house, greeting in every room. The cast…
A film in which a prodigal daughter returns to the family farm following the suicide of her brother. Ellie Kendrick (Meera from Game of Thrones) is excellent as the main character, going through all these shades of grief.
A film about a man trying to break away from his father who would rather see him dead than “go gorgi”. During the Q&A discovered that everything in the film is based on a real family called the Johnsons, who are semi-outcasts in the travelling community in Gloucester for being such mad bastard rip-and-run fiends.…
A documentary about a vegan filmmaker following a 73-year-old ex-colonial soldier on one last big game hunt. I enjoyed it overall, the main character is definitely a compelling and intriguing anachronism, but the narration by the filmmaker is unnecessary, and in some ways detracts from the film overall. It needlessly underlines the obvious, and his…
A movie about a poor Swedish bastard who gets press-ganged by the US military into taking their operatives down in a sub to the floor of the North Korean sea. Unsurprisingly, things do not go well. I would rate this movie as ok. I’ve seen this kinda thing done before and better in movies like…
Little does the main male character know when the mistress of the house walks in on him carrying out a sexual assault, she’ll be the scary one in their relationship. A violent sexual period drama, about life lived on nail ends and viscera, suffocated beneath the silence and subservience of Victorian decorum. The casting of…
Couple in a Hole is about a couple who live in self-imposed exile in a hovel in the forest where their son died. Paul Higgins and Kate Dickie (Jamie from The Thick of It and Lysa Aryn from Game of Thrones) give absolutely heartbreaking performances as this deeply loving couple trying to survive the unspeakable…
A horror film about a teacher who snaps and finally decides to teach his lesson in the only language his pupils understand. A bleeding-heart lefty’s rage fantasy, implicating the audience in their own desire to see the unpleasant main characters brought to heel. Kinda reminiscent of Funny Games, Clockwork Orange, Misery and (also by Stephen…
Never have I been so aware of my body settling, fluid puddling in my swelling feet, my aching arse, as I was watching The Devil’s Plantation. A sort of Wisconsin Death Trip-esque film set in Glasgow, entirely composing of black and white shots of the city’s urban and rural landscapes while two voices narrate two…