After three decades as an actor Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami is a vibrant look at the conflicts and battles that defined the civil rights movement. Adapted from Kemp Powers’ stage play of the same name, the film mostly takes place in an unassuming hotel where four iconic figures meet and discuss how their fame and power can be used to progress the black cause. Malcolm X…
Read MoreWaves – LFF 2019 Review
Waves begins with a dazzling 360-degree spin inside Tyler’s (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) car as he drives with one leg dangling out of the window while singing along to the radio with girlfriend Alexis (Alexa Demie). It’s a beautifully choreographed moment that captures the sparkling chemistry between these young lovers. It’s immediately clear we are in the hands of a filmmaker brimming with ideas and stylistic verve. Trey Edward Shults’ overwhelmingly…
Read MoreFilm Review: Stan and Ollie
Reviewed by Freda Cooper Comedians have notoriously unfunny private lives, so Jon S Baird’s Stan And Ollie faces an uphill task right from the get-go. It’s multiplied by the fact that Messrs Laurel and Hardy were at their peak some 80 years ago, which means the film has to walk something of a tightrope. On the one hand, avoiding patronising members of the audience who are familiar with the duo’s…
Read MoreLFF 2018 – Widows
Reviewed by Lee Hill After winning the Best Picture for 12 Years A Slave in 2014, expectations for Steve McQueen’s next feature were high. The news that McQueen was going to remake a well regarded, but distantly recalled 1983 ITV mini-series by Lynda LaPlante seemed a tad perverse (would this be his At Long Last Love or 1941?). However, McQueen and his co-writer, Gone Girl’s Gillian Flynn have, for the…
Read MoreLFF 2018 – Five Must-Sees
Freda Cooper picks her 5 must see film in this year’s London Film Festival programme. For any self-respecting film fan, the London Film Festival is a tantalizing mix of heaven and hell. Heaven is the prospect of some wonderful films, events, red carpets and more than a sprinkle or two of good old fashioned glamour and glitz. Hell is working out how many of the 225 features in this year’s…
Read MoreFrightFest 2018: Interview with Justin P. Lange, director of The Dark
Ten Questions with Justin P. Lange, director of THE DARK THE DARK is based on your Columbia University thesis short film. Was it a difficult process expanding it into a full-length feature? I never really saw this as a traditional short-to-feature type of deal, to be honest. My thesis film was my first real foray into genre filmmaking, so it was very much a trial-and-error process for me, almost like…
Read MoreFrightFest 2018: Interview with Await Further Instructions Director Johnny Kevorkian
ARROW VIDEO FRIGHTFEST 2018 10 Questions with Johnny Kevorkian What was it about Gavin Williams’s script for AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS you liked so much, and what did you add to make it more personal to you? Well, when I first read the script I thought: “How the hell am I going to make this!” It was like nothing I had ever seen before. I knew it was going to be…
Read MoreSteve McQueen’s Widows to Open LFF 2018
This year’s Opening Night gala will be Academy Award- winner Steve McQueen’s WIDOWS. The International premiere will take place on Wednesday 10th October at the Cineworld, Leicester Square. Co-written by McQueen and best-selling novelist and screenwriter Gillian Flynn and starring Academy Award®- winner Viola Davis, WIDOWS is a complex thriller about a group of women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands’ criminal activities.…
Read MoreEdinburgh Film Festival: L’Apparition
Reviewed by Lee Hill The Catholic Church has seen better days at the cinema. During the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 30s and 40s, The Church acted as gatekeeper and censor ensuring that both the Holy Spirit and Hays Code were affirmed. The clergy on film tended to come with a touch of the blarney a la Bing Crosby or as sympathetic, but ineffectual sounding boards like Karl Malden in…
Read MoreLFF 2017: Redoubtable
One of the unofficial laws surrounding biopics is the more complex and rich the subject, the more reductive and superficial the treatment of the life. Redoubtable is ostensibly about a great cinema revolutionary, Jean-Luc Godard, but his life and art are alas interpreted by Michel Hazanavicius, a director who wears his slim talent for pastiche heavily. Hazanavicius is best known for The Artist, one of the least deserving Best Picture…
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