by Hamish Calvert Mack, Andraya and Sarah are three teenage high school students competing in sports at the top of their respective fields. They have many things in common including their drive for success as well as the fact that they happen to be transgender. However due to the transphobic attitudes and policies in place across the US each of them face opposition far greater … Continue reading Changing the Game – SQIFF 2021 Review
Academy Award-winning actress Regina King takes a step behind the camera to direct the poignant One Night in Miami. The speculative drama, based on a play by Kemp Powers (who also writes the screenplay here,) is set in 1964. It revolves around a fictitious meeting where boxer Cassius Clay (aka Muhammad Ali,) singer Sam Cooke, and political activist Malcom X celebrate Clay’s win over Sonny … Continue reading One Night In Miami – Review
Writer-director Shola Amoo’s debut feature, A Moving Image, about the gentrification of Brixton, a neighbourhood of South West London predominantly occupied by Afro-Caribbean residents from the 1940s to the early 2010s, was a didactic and at times tedious work that straddled drama and documentary. It does not prepare you for his exceptional second feature, The Last Tree, in which Amoo redefines what we think of … Continue reading The Last Tree – Sundance Film Festival London Review
It is some time since Jennifer Lopez headlined a crowd pleasing Hollywood comedy. But you glance at the poster for Second Act and there’s nothing on it that suggests 2019. Indeed, it looks like a film released ten years ago. You might find yourself asking, ‘have I seen this already?’ On the face of it, you have. Back in 1988, Melanie Griffith was sandwiched between … Continue reading Second Act – Review
by Chris Rogers It’s Stath versus shark in this loose and lively adaptation of Steve Alten’s Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, which leans into its schlocky generic trappings for better and for worse. Five years after a botched underwater evacuation, rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) is called out of his self-imposed exile when a deep-sea research facility is attacked by a previously prehistoric … Continue reading The Meg – Review
Over the course of two decades of film and television work, writer-director Dominic Savage has perfected a form of improvised cinema. It begins with an idea in which the actors work with the director in exploring the options. Savage’s collaboration with Gemma Arterton, who has three careers in Hollywood (Clash of the Titans, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters), Britain (Quantum of Solace, Made in Dagenham, … Continue reading The Escape – Film Review
Movies on Weekends 