Containment – Review Sophie Wing September 13, 2015 Reviews At the surface, one might expect Containment to be a paint-by-numbers thriller, sticking seven people on one set, winding them up and letting them go; but there's enough finesse in this little indie film to...
Trainwreck and Talking Bodies: Are Jokes About Periods the New Feminist Film Revolution? Sophie Wing August 19, 2015 Analysis, Features, Opinion About halfway through Amy Schumer's breakout debut Trainwreck, her protagonist (also named Amy) explains to her sister that she's terrified of falling for her romantic lead because, in her experience of...
Second Chance: The Net Sophie Wing July 28, 2015 Features, Nostalgia, Second Chance For modern audiences, there is something delightful about the technology of the ‘80s and ‘90s on film. Whether it’s a brick-sized mobile phone or impossible operating systems, the mix of scorn and...
Miss Julie – Review Sophie Wing July 11, 2015 Reviews This adaptation carries the same uneven tones as the play of 1888, attempting as it does to prove that human nature can rocket between moods and motivations at a moment’s notice. Farrell’s butler John is...
Two Smart Sci-Fis To Watch After Interstellar Sophie Wing November 15, 2014 Analysis, Features, One Off 1 Comment Ever since Stanley Kubrick turned the sci-fi film into an art form, the rise of the intelligent sci-fi thriller - more cerebral than shoot-em-up - has been slow but steady. Now Christopher Nolan, the king of...
One Hundred Years of World War I on Film Sophie Wing November 11, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features A hundred years on from the outbreak of war in 1914, the mark it left on its descendants is still felt deeply across Europe. The loss of one million men, with thousands of them still buried somewhere in the...
A Love Letter To… TiMER Sophie Wing October 26, 2014 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia Tick, tock. Tick, tock. That click and whir of clocks is laced throughout TiMER (2009), whether it's in the jangling of its tinkly soundtrack or the details of its mise-en-scene. It's an appropriate "tick"...
Northern Soul – Review Sophie Wing October 19, 2014 Reviews It started with director Elaine Constantine remortgaging her house and has ended up the sleeper hit of the autumn box office. This boisterous, bubbling slice of 1970s small-town "oop North" tells a familiar...
Effie Gray – Review Sophie Wing October 11, 2014 Reviews As another chapter in the evolving period genre, Effie Gray combines the best of Merchant Ivory with the claustrophobia of a modern domestic thriller. Though the film is separated from Gone Girl by time,...
Stories from the Set: Breakfast at Tiffany’s Sophie Wing September 22, 2014 Behind The Curtain, Features, Stories from the Set Her name is Holly Golightly, and she has sunglasses, a cigarette holder, and a little black dress. That memory of Audrey Hepburn, taken from the 1961 adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's,...
Lucy, Hercules, and the Myths About Female-Led Movies Sophie Wing September 2, 2014 Analysis, Close-Up, Features According to its audience, Scarlett Johansson's ass-kicker action movie Lucy isn't all that good at a Rotten Tomatoes rating of just 45%. Our own Cameron Ward gave it a 3 out of 5. “There to entertain”...
A Love Letter To… Twister Sophie Wing August 24, 2014 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia 1 Comment Imagine it: the whistling howl of the wind as it tears through flat Midwestern farmland. Saturated clouds hang dark in a darker sky, their slow swirl sweeping into inverted peaks that descend towards the...
A Love Letter To… Hook Sophie Wing August 12, 2014 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia How do you write a love letter to a film that made up so much of your childhood, yet can never be seen in quite the same way again? So the loss of Robin Williams has tinged our childhood nostalgia with...
Second Chance: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Sophie Wing July 28, 2014 Features, Nostalgia, Second Chance Here's an opinion: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is better than The Temple of Doom. Gasp! Cries of "sacrilege!" ring out. Fights break out on zeppelins. Nazi faces melt off. Alright,...
Number Cruncher: 8 Actors Who Are Surprisingly Bankable Sophie Wing July 25, 2014 Analysis, Features, Top 10 You know who they are. Or rather: you know what they look like, you may know their names, but you almost certainly know what films they’ve been in. But would you be surprised to know how much those films...