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Author: Rachael Kaines

Film Review: Mudbound

The opening scene of Dees Rees’s Mudbound shows two brothers digging a hole in the dreary half-light of an approaching storm, surrounded by mud. This scene bookends the film as we spend the rest of the film finding out how the characters got there, and evokes Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying — a stormy and unforgiving Mississippi, full of mud, washed out bridges, and the need to bury dead relatives.

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Film Review: Good Time

You’re the only one who’s going to have a good time with Good Time. This stylish and energised thriller from Ben and Josh Safdie stars Robert Pattinson as Connie, a petty criminal and devoted brother, in one of his best roles to date (Pattinson has always been good, don’t listen to the haters). Good Time is intermittently bleak and neon, like a dreamlike section of an LSD trip, and will make you go “oh, people like this actually exist”.

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Film Review: Walk of Fame review

Some films are trashy, but fun. You know the ones I mean, your friend would put them on and they would be about stupid people doing stupid things and eventually fall for one another and so on. We all know that plenty of those movies are great, not just a guilty pleasure, but an actual pleasure. I can absolutely assure you that Walk of Fame is not one of those movies — you will not even get the smallest amount of enjoyment from this movie.

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The Unseen: Screenwords Meets Jasmine Hyde

Jasmine Hyde talks to Screenwords about her experience of working on the small intimate production of psychological thriller The Unseen, what it was like to come across a script with a strong female lead, and about her time as a satanic nun filming Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens.

What initially drew you to the role?

JH: I read the script about 18 months ago when the director, Gary, who I’d previously worked with in theatre gave me a couple of scripts. I read it and thought that’s a very dark, intriguing story and that Gemma’s a cracking part. A few months later Gary said he was going to do a little pilot. It was only a couple of day’s commitment so I thought, why not. Then when he said he was going to make the film, I said yes, because parts like this don’t really come along that often. So many leads are men, so it’s a bit of a refreshing change. I also thought, my God, she has to go through some stuff and that will be quite interesting, and fun. I use the term fun quite loosely, but you know what I mean.

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Film Review: Trendy

Trendy is the directorial debut from Louis Lagayette and successfully channels American Psycho into hip East London. Immigrants, hipsters, and cockneys meet gentrification, big-city loneliness, and violence in this psychological thriller.

The film follows Richard, a 30-year-old maths teacher who moves to East London. Richard is meticulous, drawing diagrams of the pokey flats he’s shown around by estate agents, donned in an extremely uncool waterproof jacket and walking shoes. He soon finds himself getting to know the locals, heading to underground parties with booming techno music with an art-gallery manager and making friends with the owner of the kebab shop across the street from his apartment. This all soon changes when his new acquaintances find out about his past.

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Top Five Horror Films of the Last Five Years

There has been something of a resurgence of horror in recent years. As a genre that for decades has been riddled with cliche and repetition of the same archetypal characters and cookie-cutter plot lines, it’s just in time. These modern horror movies are characterised by the fact they are uncategorisable — they defy the conventions of the genre within which they reside and bring each bring something new to the table, whilst integrating plenty of the tropes of the horror genre.

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