Possessor – Review Sophie Maxwell November 28, 2020 Reviews This film was previously reviewed in October 2020 as part of our London Film Festival coverage. In Brandon Cronenberg's Possessor, Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is an assassin who enters her targets’...
New Order – LFF 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell October 19, 2020 Reviews With much of the world experiencing some degree of political and social unrest, it would seem a pertinent time for the release of New Order, Michel Franco’s dystopian thriller about societal collapse in...
Zanka Contact – LFF 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell October 18, 2020 Reviews In the opening minutes of Zanka Contact, a smart and funny sex worker named Rajae tells a dark joke about a car crash to her taxi driver. Moments later, she is in a dramatic crash herself. Larsen, a faded rock...
Ultraviolence – LFF 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell October 14, 2020 Reviews In 2001, director Ken Fero released Injustice, a documentary examining the killings of Black people in police custody in the UK. Ten years in the making, Ultraviolence is Fero’s emphatic and essential...
Time – LFF 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell October 11, 2020 Reviews In Garrett Bradley’s documentary Time, Sibil "Fox" Richardson is working to have her husband Robert released from prison. She believes his sentence—60 years for armed bank robbery—is oppressively and...
The Unfamiliar – Review Sophie Maxwell September 11, 2020 Reviews In British horror The Unfamiliar, Army doctor Izzy (Jemima West) returns from war bearing battle scars. Her home and family seem not quite right, with spooky events beginning within minutes. The film’s...
Me and the Cult Leader – An Interview with Director Atsushi Sakahara Sophie Maxwell August 13, 2020 Behind The Curtain, Features, Interview In 1995 members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo (now named Aleph) deposited bags of sarin gas along Tokyo’s subway line during rush hour. It was an act of domestic terrorism that killed 13 people and has...
Everyday Greyness – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell July 11, 2020 Reviews Everyday Greyness is the story of Magda, a young Polish woman in recovery from drug addiction. Magda has been living at a treatment centre where, along with a small group of others, she has given up her life...
Me and the Cult Leader – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell June 27, 2020 Reviews In 1995, commuters in Tokyo were deliberately exposed to a deadly gas called sarin in an act of domestic terrorism. Twelve people were killed and over a thousand injured. Me and the Cult Leader: A Modern...
Keith Haring: Street Art Boy – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell June 19, 2020 Reviews Keith Haring: Street Art Boy is a biography not only of Haring and his art, but also of politics and culture in New York City in the late 70s and 80s. The film is imbued with the same joyful skittishness and...
Sisters With Transistors – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2020 Review Sophie Maxwell June 17, 2020 Reviews Lisa Rovner explores women’s work in electronic music in her feature documentary debut Sisters With Transistors. The film is told through a combination of edited archival footage and voiceover, featuring...
Still Living Deliciously: A Love Letter to The Witch Sophie Maxwell January 27, 2020 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia This article contains spoilers... What does the word ‘witch’ mean to you? I think of cauldrons, Terry Pratchett’s novels, Sabrina and her cat Salem. Of course, there’s also the real-life Salem, the...
ORWAV’s Top 20 Films of 2019: #6 – If Beale Street Could Talk Sophie Maxwell December 30, 2019 Analysis, Features, Top 10 ‘Every black person born in America was born on Beale Street, born in the black neighbourhood of some American city, whether in Jackson, Mississippi, or in Harlem, New York. Beale Street is our legacy. This...
Rojo – Review Sophie Maxwell August 31, 2019 Reviews Benjamín Naishtat’s Argentinian mystery Rojo follows Claudio (Darío Grandinetti), a prominent lawyer whose life begins to unravel after an odd encounter with a stranger. Set in 1975, Rojo’s Argentina is...
The Brink – Sheffield Doc/Fest 2019 Review Sophie Maxwell June 13, 2019 Reviews For what seems like the hundredth time, Steve Bannon positions himself next to a young woman for a photograph. With a flourish, he says "you go in the middle – a rose between two thorns." By the end of The...