The glacially paced but grimly compelling existential Danish drama Godland echoes films like The Mission, Martin Scorsese’s Silence and the works of Ingmar Bergman as it explores themes of faith, identity, culture clash and human frailty in the face of a brutal universe. On-screen text at the beginning of the film suggests a kind of Blair Witch scenario as it
Read moreDownton Abbey: A New Era. The TV series Downton Abbey, which depicted the lives of the lords and ladies of the Crawley family who inhabited the titular estate in the 1910’s and 20’s, lay somewhere between sophisticated drama and super-sized soap. Its slightly dubious celebration of privilege and apparent endorsement of class divisions was made palatable by the quality of
Read moreIn her breakthrough horror film, The Babadook, writer director Jennifer Kent used a supernatural menace to represent the threat and anxiety experienced by a single mother played by Esse Davis. Her latest film, the gruelling historical drama, The Nightingale, sees a woman and an indigenous man confronted by a more realistic threat in the brutal racist patriarchy of a British
Read morePart romance, part epic German historical drama, Never Look Away tells a story of personal trauma, artistic expression and self-discovery through the Second World War and its aftermath. Set over a tumultuous 30-year period, the film begins in 1937 as the Nazi program is beginning to have a devastating impact on German society and culture. During this time young Kurt
Read moreThe Chaperone is a charming but underweight and oddly creaky story of self-discovery and the emergence of a star amid the rapidly changing world of 1920’s America. The chaperone of the title is Norma Carlisle (Downtown Abbey’s Elizabeth McGovern) a rather prim and proper woman from Kansas who surprisingly offers to chaperone 15-year-old Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) while she
Read more‘Built For Speed’ is back for 2019 and this week we have a packed show for you as we catch up with some of the big films released over the Christmas period including ‘Aquaman’ and ‘The Favourite’. We’ll also tell you about the Interpol gig at the Palais last Friday. There’ll be plenty of fine tunes including some Interpol faves,
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