Film

Queen of Katwe falls well within the genre of a certain kind of sports film, telling as it does the story of Ugandan chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi. Comparisons could readily be made to Cool Runnings, also a Disney film about ...

There is a temptation to be dismissive of mainstream blockbusters. In truth, there is no merit in dismissing a film purely because it is part of a seemingly endless glut of studio products. It can have qualities whether it is ...

This hasn’t been a good year for me. Two of my idols have died (Prince and Bowie). If there can be a silver lining to the death of an admired genius, it’s that Bowie’s films are being remastered, The Man ...

Among the many baffling decisions taken in the lacklustre X-Men: Apocalypse, the audience was treated to the great revelation about Charles Xavier’s baldness. Rather than his hair simply thinning and receding with time, providing a realistic transition from James McAvoy’s ...

Movies about self-centred, materialistic, vacuous dolts run a fine line. I’ve never been one to advocate that the subjects of films need to conventionally sympathetic but without some sort of critical observation of such figures, a filmmaker runs the risk ...

Little Men was a film I was eager to see. I’d enjoyed Ira Sachs’ previous film, Love is Strange, but had been frustrated by how abruptly and quickly it wrapped up. Despite its unreasonable brevity, the film had left me ...

Stop the press! Tim Burton has made a film about a pallid outcast finding relief and support in an elaborate fantasy world whilst being pursued by hostile forces who seek to harm him and his new bizarre friends precisely for ...

I tend to be rather critical of the ‘based on true events’ films. Too often the relationship to real events is a crutch for a weak production, using pretentious claims of relevance to paper over shoddy storytelling and sentimentalism. Even ...

You can’t have a dignified suicide if the score is provided by a flatulent corpse. It simply can’t be done. So Hank gives up on the suicide thing and instead, rides his new corpse-pal as a fart propellor across the ...

I love Westerns. I love the bleakness, the dirt, gruff cowboys, and the acknowledgement that no matter what the cause, no death comes with glory. Remakes are always going to be tricky. Hollywood seems to think they are a safe ...