Wiener-Dog – Sundance London Review Rachel Brook May 31, 2016 Reviews Whole swathes of Wiener-Dog have nothing to do with the titular pooch who is ultimately only a contrived and poorly executed device for hanging four grotesque stories together. The first segment, which...
Short of the Week – Tempête sur Anorak Rachel Brook May 30, 2016 Features, Independent, Short of the Week https://vimeo.com/89013451 Paul Cabon’s Tempête sur Anorak (Storm Hits Jacket) won the Short Jury Award for Animation at Sundance 2015. Recently screened by Picturehouse alongside the other winners, it...
Love & Friendship – Review Rachel Brook May 29, 2016 Reviews Love and Friendship is far less funny than it should be. Most of its witty moments appeared in the trailer, and therefore lack full impact when actually seen in context. The runtime passes slowly in...
Mustang – Review Rachel Brook May 28, 2016 Reviews Mustang is impeccably structured. Nothing is gratuitous; each moment is conceived as part of the whole and contributes to the increasingly haunting narrative. Seemingly throwaway occurrences and lines become...
Everybody Wants Some!! – Review Rachel Brook May 14, 2016 Reviews Subtle as a baseball to the head, Boyhood’s successor can be as insufferable as its heinously punctuated title; unswerving adoption of the male gaze makes narrative sense but remains...
Short of the Week – The Moment Rachel Brook May 9, 2016 Features, Independent, Short of the Week https://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/164839532 Karis Oh’s The Moment is a simple anecdote told in an enthralling monologue which ties the short together and engages from the first pitch-black frame....
The Huntsman: Winter’s War – Review Rachel Brook April 7, 2016 Reviews This belated follow up to 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman is confusingly both prequel and sequel, with Snow White’s absence awkwardly conspicuous. It threatens to be bloated, patronising, and...
Kristen Wiig: Comedy Darling, Drama Queen Rachel Brook April 7, 2016 Analysis, Features, Spotlight This week Kristen Wiig stars in Nasty Baby, perhaps her most indie project yet – aesthetically at least. The trailer seems to promise an inky black sense of humour in the vein of Ben Wheatley’s...
Short of the Week – IDLE Rachel Brook March 14, 2016 Features, Independent, Short of the Week https://vimeo.com/127949242 This confident and atmospheric short may not be flashy, but its ambling, observational pace and detailed soundscape piques the curiosity. With charmingly stylised visuals...
The Citizen Kane of Awful: Accidental Love Rachel Brook March 9, 2016 Features, Nostalgia, The Citizen Kane of Awful David O. Russell’s Accidental Love, a long-gestating car crash of a production infamously daubed with a pseudonym of shame rather than Russell’s name, was screaming out for admission into the...
Where Are They Now?: Pretty in Pink Rachel Brook February 28, 2016 Features, Nostalgia, Where Are They Now? Pretty in Pink was the first John Hughes script to be produced following his cult favourite The Breakfast Club. Thirty years on Hughes is remembered by many as the godfather of the golden age of teen drama,...
Freeheld – Review Rachel Brook February 21, 2016 Reviews Freeheld’s first act combines irrelevant police cases with an awkward early-stage romance that develops into a cheesy, sun-splashed love story. The deferral of the main narrative leaves room to thoroughly...
3 The Big Short – Review Rachel Brook January 24, 2016 Reviews Though boldly stylised with, for instance, a winking Margot Robbie cameo, The Big Short fails to deliver a consistent moral standpoint, and ironically falls into the kind of cheap hypocrisy of some of its...
Room – LFF Review Rachel Brook January 17, 2016 Reviews Donaghue’s adaptation of her own novel translates the vastly distinct sections of Room equally skilfully, and treats the recoveries of both Jack and Ma with nuance. It’s Jack’s charming perspective...
Spotlight: Jennifer Lawrence Rachel Brook January 1, 2016 Analysis, Features, Spotlight We all know Jennifer Lawrence as the Girl on Fire, or Katniss Everdeen, from the recently wrapped Hunger Games series. Throughout the saga - well, until Mockingjay Part 2 - Lawrence’s acting was every bit...