Author Rachel Brook

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...

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 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 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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

  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...

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’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...

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...

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...

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...