Fruitvale Station – Sundance London Review Christopher Preston April 24, 2014 Reviews 2 Comments Shuddering footage extrapolated from a cellphone shows a group of black men sitting on a station floor. One is thrown down and a bang stings the air. Fruitvale Station begins with an ending. Michael B. Jordan...
The One I Love – Sundance London Review Christopher Preston April 23, 2014 Reviews The One I Love is a crumpled-up love letter being tumble-dried inside one of the drums of The Twilight Zone. Charlie McDowell manages to crack open a window and pump a fresh breeze into a genre bloated with...
Drunktown’s Finest – Sundance London Review Christopher Preston April 22, 2014 Reviews Drunktown’s Finest is Sydney Freeland’s directorial debut on a feature - and it shows. This film, which combines the increasingly interwoven stories of three young Native Americans, is never quite able to...
Transcendence – Review Christopher Preston April 21, 2014 Reviews Which is worse: a bad film or a disappointing one? Transcendence manages to be both at the same time. Wally Pfister’s directorial debut is a fractured crazy pavement, cementing together thick slabs of...
Making It Big: Somewhere The King David Brake April 16, 2014 Features, Independent, Making It Big 1 Comment Students, eh? A mass band of mad, crazy, drink riddled folk acting as a burden to society, right? Well, there are a few who buck the trend. Although we can't comment on the filmmaker's relation with madness...
Calvary – Review Christopher Preston April 14, 2014 Reviews A darkness hangs over Calvary; as bleak and angry as a pregnant thundercloud. Those hoping for a thematic sequel to The Guard will quickly discover that they won’t find it here. Calvary isn’t perfect; the...
The Raid 2 – Review Tom Bond April 11, 2014 Reviews 1 Comment Get ready for your new favourite fight scenes. Baseball Boy. Hammer Girl. The hotplate. The mudbath bloodbath. And oh boy, if you thought Gravity was visceral cinema then the kitchen showdown is here to...
The Citizen Kane of Awful: Titanic – The Legend Goes On Tom Bond April 10, 2014 Features, Nostalgia, The Citizen Kane of Awful 1 Comment Cast: Lisa Russo, Mark Thompson-Ashworth, Silva Belton Director: Camillo Teti Writer: Camillo Teti Estimated Budget: Unknown U.S. Gross: Unknown When I say Titanic, what do you think of?...
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – Review Christopher Preston April 9, 2014 Reviews Calling Marc Webb’s perfunctory remixing of Spider-Man’s origins "Amazing" was an audacious claim back in 2012. Now, less than two years later, comes the web-slinger’s greatest battle: to remain...
Half of a Yellow Sun – Review Tom Bond April 7, 2014 Reviews 2 Comments If Adichie's book was half of a yellow sun then this adaptation merely cowers under its imposing shadow. Bandele's theatre background shows in the basic and unimaginative direction and his screenplay...
Tom at the Farm – Review Janz Anton-Iago April 3, 2014 Reviews Spectacularly prolific French-Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan returns to the scene with his fourth feature (note: he's just turned 25), a brooding, beguiling thriller set amid the Quebecois countryside where...
The Double – Review Christopher Preston April 3, 2014 Reviews 1 Comment The Double sees Jesse Eisenberg thumping his two favourite masks - milksop and scumbag - together as if they were a pair of cymbals. This doppelgänger nightmare is something we should want to digest...
Muppets Most Wanted – Review Christopher Preston April 2, 2014 Reviews 1 Comment Muppets Most Wanted isn’t the Muppets resting upon their laurels. It’s them lounging on a throne crafted from pure nostalgic complacency. Ricky Gervais picks up where Jason Segel and Amy Adams left off....
Starred Up – Review Christopher Preston March 20, 2014 Reviews Starred Up serves its porridge with bits of broken glass. It grins as it spits teeth, just as likely to erupt into another volcanic episode of violence as it is to cough up a pearl of prison wisdom. Jack...
The Zero Theorem – Review Tom Bond March 15, 2014 Reviews 1 Comment The Zero Theorem is unmistakably a Terry Gilliam film, for better or worse. He has created a deliciously chaotic dystopia, saturated with colour and adverts, but his ramshackle directing threatens to disengage...