Scott Graham’s beautifully shot Iona tells the story of the difficulties encountered by Iona (Ruth Negga), a young mother returning to her birthplace, the island with which she shares her name. Fleeing traumatic circumstances, Iona and her son Bull (Ben Gallagher) attempt to integrate themselves with island society, a process complicated by figures from Iona’s Read More
“Based on a true story”. Five words that make any film feel all the more real even before the opening scene; Freeheld is no exception. The film begins in 2002 in New Jersey and stars Julian Moore as celebrated detective Laurel Hester and Ellen Paige as her partner Stacie Andree. The film touches on the Read More
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a science-fiction novel set in a distant future where humans have reached out beyond our solar system and joined the larger galactic community. It follows the interspecies crew of the industrial ship Wayfarer as they seek their fortune building a wormhole highway to a mysterious and Read More
Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump’s latest project sees them tackle J.G. Ballard’s eponymous novel which, often deemed “unfilmable”, has been in the pipeline for forty years. Safe to say they make it entirely cinematic with the help of Mark Tildesley’s incredible production design and clinical camera work by Laurie Rose. With signature black humour, their Read More
Goodnight Mommy, from Austrian directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, is a horror with many niche directions and approaches to the genre – for instance, dialogue wasn’t overly frequent as the film relies more on creating a traditional psychological horror atmosphere than telling the audience what is happening. This atmospheric tension is persistent from the first few seconds Read More
Personally, I adore horror. The jump scares, the adrenaline, everything. So, as a horror fanatic I was ecstatic at the opportunity to watch a new one, with the premise being supernatural lore from the 17th century. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. The film begins with a pilgrim family being banished from Read More
Likely every former Glasgow schoolchild – even those of us secretly from adjacent places like Renfrewshire – will have a notion of how Scotland’s largest city grew from its more easterly beginnings at one side of the Clyde. We all have a shadowy sense of how our city became something much bigger: more encompassing, and Read More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT6QJaS2a-U Existential thoughts and ideals are the foundation for many of Charlie Kaufman’s films, thrusting his conflicted characters into both the greatly sublime and vastly melancholic. Being the intense character study that it is, Anomalisa proves to be no exception. Originally conceived for the stage, this stop motion animation film for grown-ups tells the story Read More
“Then using the dead as step-stools, I climbed out of the ground.” The protagonist of Sara Nović’s debut novel Girl at War is the beautifully-drawn tomboy narrator, Ana, who would be six years older than Nović herself. Unquestionably, this book’s research has not all been done from a library seat. In a search for more Read More
The car hire company bestows upon you the great gift of abandoning you to the airport overnight. Returned to the eternal striplights of your early travels, you wrap your head in the checkered pakama, place the green Ethiopian Airways eyemask on your face, and insert the orange earplugs which can’t quite block the music of Read More