Like David Lynch in the 1990s and 2000s, Yorgos Lanthimos has brought dark humour and surreal artistry at least a little closer to mainstream cinema. He’s skewered relationships and social conformity in The Lobster, elitist power structures in The Favourite and the suburban family in The Killing Of a Sacred Deer. Now, he turns his darkly comic gaze to sexism
Read moreLa La Land is Whiplash director Damien Chazelle’s exhilarating homage to 1950’s musicals and the artists who struggle to make it in the dubious city of dreams that is LA. Superbly crafted from its touching love story to its vibrant cinematography and sprightly musical numbers this is a cinematic experiment that works from beginning to end. Chazelle’s triumph is his
Read moreAlejandro González Iñárritu’s idiosyncratic serio-comic take on the machinations of theatre, the decline of cinema and the fickleness of celebrity, Birdman, has been the toast of international film festivals meaning it has arrived on our shores carrying the weight of enormous expectation. That sort expectation often leads to disappointment and that is to some extent the case here. While this
Read moreMagic in the Moonlight, the latest film from Woody Allen, is an engaging light-weight rom-com that explores familiar Woody Allen themes of existential angst, the search for life’s meaning and the curative power of fantasy and romance. Set in 1928, the film stars Colin Firth as misanthropic stage magician, self-proclaimed intellectual and avowed sceptic, Stanley who has earned acclaim for
Read moreAfter our focus on Bob Dylan last week Built For Speed returns to more contemporary music with new tracks from Mia Dyson, Morrissey, Bob Mould and many others. We also take a look at the latest film for the amazingly prolific Woody Allen with Magic in the Moonlight. For those who enjoy a brain-twisting time travel fantasy we tell you
Read moreThe Croods is an animated film about a family of cave people which might sound like a thinly disguised rehash of The Flintstones but it’s actually a thinly disguised but very well made, rehash of most family-oriented animated films of the last few decades. The eponymous Croods are a prehistoric family whose lives are, not surprisingly, ruled by fear of
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