United Kingdom
Despite The Falling Snow is a film by novelist and filmmaker Shamim Sharif. The film is based on her book of the same name and plays out over two time periods. In 1950’s Moscow Katya is a spy for the Americans and is encouraged to marry and steal secrets from the young politician Alex.
I have been following the production of Eddie The Eagle for a very long time it seems. I’m a great devotee of director Dexter Fletcher (Sunshine On Leith is excellent), I love a good sports movie, even better, I love a British underdog sports movie. Of course, if you know me or are familiar with me at all you’ll know I also absolutely adore Taron Egerton.
It’s no secret that Sacha Baron Cohen makes comedies that age badly, no matter how well-regarded they are upon their release. His reputation as a satirist with his finger on the pulse of contemporary societal prejudices ensures that days and weeks after initial release they become regarded as documents of America’s unforgivable past. With Grimsby, Cohen makes his first British movie in fourteen years, after his execrable debut Ali G In Da House – and it is the first time his brand of social satire feels not just outdated, but tired prior to release.
I love Pride & Prejudice and I will never tire of its adaptations and interpretations. I also really like zombie films. I am Pride & Prejudice & Zombies’ demographic.
Back in 2013, a prestigious ballet director from the Bolshoi Theater named Sergei Filin was attacked outside his house, and acid was thrown into his face. He suffered third degree burns all over his face and down his neck and was left blind in one eye. After an investigation, it was discovered that a dancer of the Bolshoi paid the perpetrator; the motive was in reference to the casting of Swan Lake in which Filin was responsible.
I love the TV show Dad’s Army. Originally aired between 1968 and 1977, it is a show that remains hugely popular to this day, and I can watch it every Saturday night on BBC Two and listen to the radio version every Monday morning on BBC Radio 4 Extra. Like all incredible BBC comedies, it makes up a part of the British psyche and its characters and catchphrases are legendary.
The Falling, the first drama feature by critically acclaimed director Carol Morley, went largely unnoticed on its general release. Despite collecting high praise from the critics, and starring Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams in the lead role, The Falling was almost a blink-and-you-miss-it situation. This seems absolutely tragic, as I would have no reservations in rating it as my favourite film of 2015.
It’s been at least two years now since I first saw Daniel Radcliffe on The Graham Norton Show, sporting the unattractive hair extensions that would define his character, Igor’s, look. Admittedly, I have been excited for Victor Frankenstein since I first heard of its production. A Frankenstein ‘re-imagining’, told from Igor’s point of view, and one starring both Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy?
In What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy two sons are brought together by a shared legacy, the legacy mentioned in the title. Both are the sons of high-ranking Nazi officers.
We’ve seen Bond undergo a lot of changes for over fifty years: the globe-trotting playboy whose license to kill spared no evil doer or anonymous henchman. James Bond, the catalyst of Ian Fleming’s romanticized panorama of espionage, grew from fiction novels to a film series that would become a cinematic phenomenon spanning over fifty years.
Watch Our Lad here. Our Lad, brought lovingly to life by director Rachna Suri, is a compelling insight into a British Muslim community and the conflict between two brothers. The short film stars Shazad Latif (The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) as a young Muslim soldier returning from Afghanistan to an antagonistic brother and community.
Technology has made finding relationships easier than before, yet also far more difficult to sustain. Less than a day before writing this review, my boyfriend broke up with me. It took eight months to realise that we are completely different people with different interests, with the realisation of our incompatibility unwelcome but inevitable.
Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr), the new governess for two orphaned children in Victorian England, arrives at their idyllic country estate in the beginning of the psychological horror film, The Innocents (1961). The naive young woman, who has a lived a solidly middle class existence as a vicar’s daughter, marvels at the stately home and spacious grounds. Everything, including her two young charges, seems innocent and perfect.
Every year I seem to arrive at an impasse with horror films. Like many other lovers of the genre out there, we will always have love for Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers (just tell Rob Zombie to cut it out). But when you’ve seen one too many teens by the lake, and you hear Freddy say “bitch” one time too many, you realize there’s more to the genre than just blood lust and hockey masks.
Suffragette has been grabbing the attention of the media and public long before it was even released. First, there were rumours that there were to be no women of colour in the film (this is true). Then there was the at best ignorant, at worst painfully offensive campaign led by Meryl Streep and the rest of the cast, featuring photos of them wearing t-shirts stating ‘I’d rather be a rebel than a slave’.