On Chesil Beach (2017)

From the lows of The Good Son and The Innocent to the highs of The Cement Garden and Atonement, it would be fair to say that author Ian McEwan has experienced mixed fortunes when it comes to film adaptations of his literary works. Widely regarded as one of the best British writers this side of…

Mary And The Witch’s Flower (2017)

My relationship with Japanese anime is what one might call ‘basic’. I, along with every other child of the time, was fully swept along with the Pokemon phenomenon wave of the late 90s/early 00s, and in the following years have sampled and enjoyed the highlights of the iconic Studio Ghibli like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s…

Beast (2017)

The last film I reviewed on this blog was set in Guernsey, and this week we’re hopping across the Channel to the island of Jersey for Michael Pearson’s directorial debut Beast. Their close locations promise to be the only thing the two picture have in common, however, with the former being a quaint, comfortable period drama…

Wonderstruck (2017)

Is it just me, or did Wonderstruck, Todd Hayne’s latest directorial offering, have one of the most confusing and misleading trailers of all time? Perhaps I was tired when I watched it, perhaps I’m just a dummy, but I honestly went in to the film expecting to see some sort of time travel, multiple lives…

Wonder Wheel (2017)

I know, I know. Given the current climate in Hollywood and across the film industry in general over the past year, the decision to watch a Woody Allen film in 2018 feels like the furthest thing from a good idea. Welcome to the post Oscars cinematic calendar landscape, a strange and confusing time of the…

A Fantastic Woman (2017)

To my eternal discredit, I only managed to see two of the five pictures nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars. The first was Russian entry Loveless, and, luckily for me, the second was A Fantastic Woman, the Chilean entry that ended up taking the big prize on Sunday night. It’s victory…

The 90th Annual Academy Awards: Head vs. Heart

Well, it’s that time of the year again when Hollywood plays host to the elite creators of the film world, the culmination of awards season, the cherry that every nominee wants to add to their personal cake, the 90th Annual Academy Awards. With this year’s ceremony hosted by Jimmy Kimmel set to be politically and…

I, Tonya (2017)

As someone who grew up in the 1990s harbouring a growing love for sports of all kinds, the story of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan was one that I knew in very broad strokes, most of which were extremely untrue. Rather than Harding, the redneck rebel of the figure skating world, taking a baseball bat…

Lady Bird (2017)

Being much closer to thirty now than any of my precious teen years, the world of ‘coming of age’ cinema is something that I tend to only want to revisit with the promise of some really high quality content. In the case of Lady Bird, attached names like Greta Gerwig, Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalfe were…

The Shape Of Water (2017)

With just twelve short days until the pinnacle of the cinematic calendar, the 90th Academy Awards, all of this year’s most celebrated motion pictures are coming thick and fast though the screens of British movie theatres. With a remarkable thirteen Oscar nominations to its name, Guillermo Del Toro’s latest offering, The Shape Of Water, arrived…