Author Rachel Brook

The 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival featured a film called My Name is Emily, by Simon Fitzmaurice. This year, It’s Not Yet Dark is billed as the story behind Fitzmaurice’s film. It both is and...

From the synopsis, Modern Life is Rubbish could be accused of rehashing High Fidelity, yet it more than justifies its existence. It’s a wonderfully evocative period drama of the past ten(ish) years, littered...

Paris Can Wait, the first foray into fiction from Eleanor Coppola (wife of Francis Ford), is at best a Woody Allen-esque Americans-do-Europe travelogue, and at worst a boring and indulgent piece of wealth...

The grumpy old(er) man comedy is a great tradition. See Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt, or the forthcoming A Man Called Ove for examples of hilarious cantankerousness ultimately giving way to a heartwarming...

Here it is, finally: a female-fronted superhero movie directed by a woman. But does Wonder Woman live up to its name or squander its landmark potential? Our very own Tom Bond believes DC have finally got...

Like Spike Jonze’s Her, Marjorie Prime is set in a future not too different from the world we know. This adaptation of Jordan Harrison’s Pulitzer-nominated play takes place largely within mundane and...

Crown Heights is the kind of film you don’t always enjoy, but are glad to have seen afterwards. Writer-director Matt Ruskin doesn’t quite do justice to the affecting true life story; the screenplay feels...

Jawbone is an odd hybrid of gritty British drama, character study, and sports movie. It develops so slowly that it’s almost a surprise to see protagonist Jimmy suddenly climb into the boxing ring for a...

With Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant rearing its ugly head this week, it’s time to consider the other characters and performers who’ve stolen scenes in his films. The first to spring to mind – Brad...

This absorbing feature debut from writer-director Hope Dickson Leach is expertly controlled and assembled, with convincingly detailed sets and a barely-there score which never crowds the central...

Lady Macbeth is period drama without the hard edges filed off; its plot lives in the spaces of illegitimacy, upstairs-downstairs romance, and single-minded ambition that are usually denied or shamed in more...

A Dark Song makes its first impression as a slow-building drama, opening atmospherically with a mournful score and moody timelapse photography of stormy skies. Leads Catherine Walker and Steve Oram walk a fine...

Two Soft Things, Two Hard Things treats its subject matter with thoughtful and meticulous nuance. It’s a fascinating and intelligent study of growing LGBT acceptance in Nunavut contextualised within a...

While Pushing Dead lacks a consistently engaging narrative, writer-director Tom E. Brown has created a bravely idiosyncratic tone and style that nevertheless demands attention. The most overt component of this...

Free CeCe! promises to be another excoriating exposé of the injustices of the American legal and prison systems, tackling an uninterrogated part of the story tracked in Ava DuVernay’s 13th by specifically...