Ostensibly a biopic of notorious former Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding, I, Tonya is a sharp if at times overly quirky satire on the perverse culture of American celebrity as well as a disturbing expose of what, according the film, was a life of tragic abuse. In an already lauded performance Margot Robbie plays Harding as an emotionally damaged self-confessed
Read moreMaudie, which is based on the life of Canadian folk artist Maude Lewis has Oscar written all over it. A moving but often mawkish story of someone battling against the odds, it’s exactly the sort of film the academy rewards. In lead Sally Hawkins case, however, that honour would be deserved. Sallie Hawkins plays Maude a middle-aged woman crippled and
Read moreThe film Churchill often feels as if director Johnathon Teplitzky and writer Alex von Tunzelmann have taken The King’s Speech and replaced King George the Sixth with Winston Churchill. Both films are about a British leader confronting self-doubt and the crushing responsibility to their people in the dark days of the Second World War. Churchill is not a comprehensive biopic
Read moreGiven its unusual mix of genres, namely, period film, biopic, race-relations story, political drama and romance, Belle had the potential to be a fascinating film. Somehow, the whole is less than the sum of the parts as Belle, while handsome and well-made, is not the compelling story it should have been. Belle is a true story based on the early life
Read moreThe Look of Love, the latest film for British director Michael Winterbottom, is not a biopic of Burt Bacharach or Dusty Springfield although the spirit of romantic 60’s cool they epitomised infuses this film. The Look of Love is like a British answer to The People vs. Larry Flynt as it depicts the career and personal travails of porn king
Read moreHitchcock, is a prosaic but still engrossing biopic of the legendary director Alfred Hitchcock (played here by Anthony Hopkins). Based on the critically acclaimed Stephen Rebello book “Alfred Hitchcock and the making of Psycho”, the film doesn’t provide an overview of Hitchcock’s life but instead focuses on a pivotal segment of it, in this case the making of what is
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