Ken Loach is one of contemporary cinema’s most important auteurs. Now, four years after his emotionally gruelling depiction of the gig economy’s impact on working class Britain in Sorry We Missed You, he returns with the immigration drama, The Old Oak. In a career that stretches back to the 1960’s, Loach has carved a distinctive niche in left wing humanist
Read moreSaltburn, is writer/director Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to her striking but erratic feature debut, Promising Young Woman. More stylistically assured than that film, Saltburn is an enjoyably strange, dark satire of class consciousness, poisonous wealth and social exclusion so full of indelible scenes that we can mostly overlook some slightly shaky storytelling. Barry Keoghan, who was unforgettable in the Banshees of
Read moreThe dystopian sci-fi film series, The Hunger Games was hugely successful and a cultural touchstone for many young cinema goers (but not so much this reviewer). Through those films, Jennifer Lawrence established herself as a major star playing heroine, Katniss Everdeen who, in a post-apocalyptic future, competed in the eponymous televised teen gladiator death matches and battled the fictional nation
Read moreBringing to life a full-scale biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte has been something of an Ahab-like quest for film directors. Stanley Kubrick had a Napoleon film (at one point with Jack Nicholson as the French Emperor) in the works for many years before shelving it due to studio budget concerns. Russian director Sergei Bondarchuk tackled the subject with mixed results in
Read moreBased on Ian Reid’s 2018 novel, the dystopian sci fi drama, Foe offers an intriguing premise but too often delivers it in a dull fashion. Set in the year 2065, the film depicts a world in which our worst fears about the impacts of climate change have been realised. Global drought has almost annihilated agriculture so governments have begun a
Read moreThrough films like Air, Blackberry and now Dumb Money, an intriguing sub-genre has recently emerged in cinema: the maverick entrepreneur capitalist film. Through their depiction of quirky yet highly driven individuals, these movies both critique and celebrate the American obsession with the market and the pursuit of business success. The latest addition to this sub-genre, the fascinating, funny, cheekily inspiring,
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