**** I never thought I’d see a film which made the audience laugh at the epilogue notes that precede the credits of true story films. But Can You Ever Forgive Me? Is that kind of film. If you’re thinking ‘well, what sort of film is that?’ then… let’s see if we can answer that together. […]
Read More Review: Can You Ever Forgive Me?*** Lee Jong-su (Ah-in Yoo) has writers block. A creative writing graduate working a part-time job as he waits for inspiration to strike, his life is without direction when he runs into Hae-mi (Jong-seo Jun), a lively former schoolmate who ropes him into looking after her elusive cat while she takes a trip to Africa. […]
Read More Review: Burning**** Three years after winning the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Big Short, a fast-paced and funny look at the 2008 financial crash, writer-director Adam McKay turns his attention to the Iraq War in Vice, an idiosyncratic biopic of ‘the most powerful Vice President in history’, Dick Cheney (Christian Bale). With the same distinctive […]
Read More Review: Vice**** In the mid-nineties, years before Hayao Miyazaki achieved global acclaim with the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, he and his Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata were already looking for talented animators to succeed them as the animation studio’s head directors. With Yoshifumi Kondô, an animator who had worked with the pair for over a decade, they […]
Read More Hidden Gems: Whisper of The Heart****½ How does a filmmaker navigate the tricky subject of racist shootings by US police? It is the terrible relevance of the issue that makes it such a double edged sword: it is a subject that demands attention and yet one that is so raw that any depiction on-screen opens itself up to the possibility […]
Read More Review: Monsters and Men***** “She devours men… and she doesn’t wear a corset.” That’s how French writer Willy (Dominic West) describes his ideal heroine in Wash Westmoreland’s period biopic Colette, released in UK cinemas on 11th January. It’s a knowing prod at the way in which male writers so often fetishise their female characters, and a sharp point […]
Read More Review: Colette**½ Two years after Tite Kubo’s Shonen Jump hit Bleach ended its 15-year run, director Shinsuke Sato takes us back to where it all began in this decidedly mixed-bag of a live-action adaptation. If you had any interest in anime and manga in the mid-2000s you’ll know the story: high-schooler Ichigo Kurosaki is gifted supernatural […]
Read More Manga Madness: Bleach (2018)