Author Rachel Brook

Focus is a film of clear halves; a time jump refreshes the narrative just as you start to wonder if its hackneyed premise is actually going anywhere. Despite a somewhat predictable conclusion, Ficarra and...

Over the years, negative assessments of Keira Knightley’s acting abilities have included the phrases ‘woeful’ and ‘so bloody awful it hurts my eyes’, with many critiques specifically focussing on the...

Spotlight is a new feature dedicated to actors who continually turn in impressive performances yet fly under the radar, often not receiving the recognition they deserve. Spotlight aims to be both a tribute to...

Countless words of exegesis on the teen movie have been published, but Lyne has winningly executed a fresh method that abandons the attempt to describe audiovisual media with only words, often instead letting...

The last instalment of Welcome to the ‘80s discussed Will Gluck’s Easy A, and the way it emulates and alludes to many of the classic ‘80s films considered in this series. This time around we take a look...

A faultlessly modulated performance from O’Connell holds together a film of imbalanced fragments. Lifeless dramatisation of Zamperini’s childhood suffers in comparison to better realised scenes of his...

For evidence of the enduring popularity of ‘80s screen stories one need look no further than the recent plethora of remakes like Fame and Footloose, and West End musical adaptations such as Back to the...

1980s high school movies are a mixed bag, with the plethora of cult teen films ranging tonally from dick jokes to contemplations on mortality (sometimes even within the same film). Of course the high-school...

Kitschy and tediously drawn-out home video credits give way to a humorous portrait of arrested development in the vein of Frances Ha and Drifters. While stylistically closer to the latter, Say When’s...

The extreme saccharine romanticism of Pemberton’s (Cooper) first meeting with Serena (Lawrence) may cause some to wish the film had remained in the can another two years, yet brutal dramatisation of the...

While far from being critically slammed, 2011’s The Help didn’t quite achieve the kind of hype or awards success that can now be expected from Autumn/Winter releases tackling themes of racism and black...

Grant’s washed-up screenwriter is a familiar but less charismatic version of his over-the-hill musician in Lawrence’s Music and Lyrics. The Rewrite suffers by comparison; there’s nothing to rival the...

As critics map the stars of Cronenberg’s latest, the facial and vocal contortions of Moore’s transformation into the uptalking over-sharer Havana will make her a focal point - but no one in Maps puts a...

Scherfig balances An Education’s idealisation of Oxford University with this saga of undergraduate decadence and debauchery. The first act, particularly the prologue, verges into seemingly unintentional...

As we saw in Music of the Movies: John Hughes, music is never just background noise in ‘80s films; it’s also integral to story and character. And while the surprise dance scene of The Breakfast Club is an...