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Month: August 2017

Review: UNA By Benedict Andrews

The repercussions of telling a story of child grooming and abuse and its subsequent fall out in the years after will always be a sensitive and agonising road to venture down. First-time feature film director, Benedict Andrews, has bitten off more than he can handle in his adaptation of playwright David Harrower’s stage drama Blackbird, failing to build the intensity it cries out for.

Andrews gives a valiant effort in trying to build a world outside the four walls the play confines its characters too, but this only enhances Rooney Mara’s character Una’s mental instability, turning the victim of such a heinous crime into an unstable woman reminiscent of Glenn Close’s bunny boiler act in Fatal Attraction.

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FrightFest Film Review: 3rd Night

The dark opening sequence hangs heavily over the rural idyll shown in 3rd Night. Somewhere between B-movie and video nasty, a little girl is running around the woods, with the industry standard grisly event; but the soundtrack is brilliantly disturbing and unearthly, and the pace is well-judged. The nursery rhyme the child is singing drives everything else that unfolds in this movie.

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FrightFest: Radius

Making its European premiere at this year’s Horror Channel Frightfest, Radius is a new horror scifi feature directed by Caroline Labrèche and Steeve Léonard. Although offering an intriguing premise and a genuinely promising storyline, the film sadly fails to live up fully to  expectations, but don’t let that put you off too much, because there is plenty more to like in this ambitious production which is likely to please genre and indie fans alike.

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Film Review: Logan Lucky

It wasn’t so long ago that Steven Soderbergh was talking of retirement and the need to move on to something new. Luckily for us, the director is back with a film which is set to be one of his most well received to date. Yes Logan Lucky is yet another heist movie, and yes the jokes are a little on the predictable side, but make no mistake, this brilliantly well crafted and impeccably acted production was worth waiting four years for.

Staring Channing Tatum, Adam Driver and an unrecognisable Daniel Craig, the film is everything any Soderbergh fan could have wished for and more. In fact, with its quirky characters of bumbling country folk and reckless misfits, Logan Lucky would certainly feel more at home alongside any Coen Brothers production than the average Soderbergh narrative.

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Film Review: Detroit

Chartering the events that took place during the Detroit race riots of 1967, Kathryn Bigelow’s harrowing new film Detroit maybe a hard watch for most, but is nevertheless as essential today as Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning was almost 30 years ago. Written by Mark Boal and staring some of the most impressive young actors working in Hollywood right now, the film carries with it a strong message which nobody can afford to ignore, especially in the current circumstances America finds itself under the Trump administration and the recent Charlottesville debacle which has reignited the hateful rhetoric of white supremacy and allowed the far right to flourish.

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FrightFest: Exclusive Barbara Crampton interview

Ahead of her eagerly awaited presence at Horror Channel FrightFest 2017, genre icon, actress & producer BARBARA CRAMPTON talks exclusively about her latest film Replace, battling chronic fatigue syndrome and her passion for supporting new talent.

Q: REPLACE raises questions about beauty, body image and growing older, issues that many feel plague the Hollywood movie industry. What is your view on this subject?

The best movies reflect our inner world, our hopes, our good intentions, trials and our demons. Growing old and the fear of death is endemic to all, not just the movie industry. Just when you begin to figure it out your back aches, your skin starts to wrinkle and you gain weight just by LOOKING at your food. Let’s be frank: Aging sucks! But it also gives you a calendar to get things done. If we had an abundance of time we might be sloths putting off everything and accomplishing nothing. To me the best thing you can do is to live in each moment as successfully as possible. That translates to all areas of your life, personal, career and lifestyle choices.  

 

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Film Review: A Ghost Story

Once in a while a film comes along which affects you in more ways than you could have ever imagined. Heralded by some as one the best movies to come out of Sundance this year, David Lowry’s A Ghost Story is an incredibly well executed exercise is subtly and an engenoius masterclass in clever filmmaking. Centring around ideas of loss, legacy and the need for human connection, the film is sure to leave its audiences stunned and in awe of its simple yet highly effective premise. Written by Lowry himself and staring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, A Ghost Story never resorts to predictable tropes nor does it go out of its way to alienate its audiences with an overly complicated narrative arc. Lowry’s ability to normalise allegory and symbolism is a testament to his sublime writing credentials.

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Film Review: Annabelle Creation

 Reviewed By Linda Marric

In what could be considered the best instalment yet of the ever growing conjuring universe, Annabelle: Creation  arrives at UK cinemas this weekend, and it would be a surprise to no one to say that it isn’t terribly clever, nor does it win in the subtlety stakes. Having said that, it would however be disingenuous to pretend that the film doesn’t have its moments. With predictable jump-scares and needless thuds and crashes, the makers bring nothing new or challenging to this very popular franchise, but if it is predictable you’re after, then by all means look no further.

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Film Review: Maudie

Chartering the life of folk artist Maude Lewis and the romance which blossomed in later life between her and taciturn fish peddler Everett, Aisling Walsh’s Maudie is moving without ever being schmaltzy and gripping without having to resort to a superfluous narrative arc. Staring Sally Hawkins as the Nova Scotia artist known for her infantile drawings of cats, flowers and colourful landscapes, the film is not only likely to move its audiences to tears, but also manages to tell a beautifully nuanced story without ever sugar-coating some of the more unsavoury element of relationship between the two protagonists.

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