Deconstructing the machinery of cinema.
One of the best films I have ever seen about art is Julian Schnabel's 1996 biographical drama Basquiat, which related the brief career of its titular New York contemporary artist. The film introduced me to Schnabel - a fine artist moonlighting as a film director - as well as its brilliant star Jeffrey Wright, of whom ...
Two men, their hands tied behind their backs, flee across a beach at dawn. MacConnachie (Robert Shaw), the older of the two men heads inland with murderous intent. Ansell (Malcolm McDowell), nervous and reluctant, trails behind him. In the skies, an anonymous helicopter searches for them. Largely forgotten it seems, Joseph Losey's on-the-run thriller Figures in ...
Zak and Saraya Knight live in Norwich; part of a family of amateur wrestlers, they dream of one day joining the popular World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) organisation in America. When they finally get the chance to compete for a spot in the WWE's trainee NXT program, Saraya is accepted while Zak is not - putting ...
Jade (Vicky Knight) is a London single mother. A resentful ex-boyfriend threw acid on her face. While months of surgery and skin grafts have saved her life, the deep irreperable scarring has left her deeply traumatised. Neglecting her family and friends, Jade slips into a downward spiral as she struggles to accept her new existence. ...
In England's black-and-white, 4:3 ratio past, rich dilletante Victor (Charlie Robb) invites his friends to see his latest acquisition: a decrepit, insolated, and supposedly haunted manor house. After sharing dinner with emotionally wounded Texan George (Tom Bailey), acid-tongued socialite Christine (Margaret Clunie), conceited tennis player Teddy (Timothy Renouf), and Teddy's nervous lower-class girlfriend Elizabeth (Jessica ...
Jackie Morrison (Kate Dickie) lives in Glasgow, and monitors CCTV cameras for a living. One night she recognises a man on one of the monitors, Clyde Henderson (Tony Curran), and tracks his movements to the notorious Red Road apartments in Balornock. Then she deliberately manufactures a 'chance' meeting with him, and ingratiates herself into his ...
England, 1613. After his iconic Globe Theatre burns to the ground - the result of a misfired cannon effect - playwright William Shakespeare (Kenneth Branagh) returns home to Stratford-Upon-Avon and a family he barely knows. To an extent you can see the hubris from orbit: actor/director Kenneth Branagh, widely regarded as his generation's finest Shakespearean ...
