The year is 2092. All of the forests on Earth have vanished and the planet is overrun with sprawling deserts and an acidic soil which causes plants to perish. An organisation titled UTS Corporation have stepped in to offer individuals refuge aboard their luxurious spaceship – that is, if you can afford it. UTS is…
Category: Film
Sundance Film Festival: “Pleasure” Review
Film festivals carry an element of prestige, despite being one of the worst possible ways to watch and assess movies. When you’re watching a minimum of four films a day, films that would otherwise captivate you under normal circumstances become schedule fillers, the festival experience making it easy to wax lyrical about the work that…
Sundance Film Festival: “Wild Indian” Review
Native American cinema (North American) has been present for over a couple of decades. However, it started to receive more attention when Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, directed by Zacharias Kunuk, became the first indigenous-language film to win the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2001. Acted entirely in the Inuktitut language, this extraordinary production, in some…
Sundance Film Festival: “Judas and the Black Messiah” Review
Structuring a biopic around a controversial figure is a near impossible art, with mixed results likely to stem from either leaning into or neutering their status. Judas and the Black Messiah opts to lean into the innate complications of William O’Neal, the informant who worked as a Black Panther mole for the FBI, transforming a…
International Film Festival Rotterdam: “Archipel” Review
The French noun for archipelago – an extensive collection of islands, Archipel is a murmuring and drifting exploration of the Saint Lawrence River that runs from The Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. Directed by Félix Dufour-Laperrière, Archipel blends the real with the dreamed as it weaves history together with imagination in the form of…
“David” Review
Therapists are often seen as omniscient emblems of level-headedness, reassurance, and wisdom. Enigmatic individuals who soak up your life story and provide answers to all your burning existential problems; all while you barely know anything about their own lives. It’s almost easy to believe that they have no problems at all – but this is…
“The Mauritanian” Review
The legal drama is a genre that has never died, and yet each new courtroom set movie is usually greeted with a critical reaction citing it as the kind of mid budget film for adults that isn’t really made anymore. This is part of the reason why Aaron Sorkin’s Trial of the Chicago 7, an…
“The Doorman” Director Ryuhei Kitamura’s Wildest Movie Moments
Exploding onto the action scene in 2000 with his instant cult classic zombie yakuza flick, Versus, director Ryuhei Kitamura marked himself as a name to look out for when it comes to extreme, over-the-top action cinema. With his latest action thrill-ride, The Doorman, Kitamura shows no signs of relaxing the pace as he delivers another…
“One Night in Miami” Review
This year’s prestige film season is dominated by adaptations of stage plays, inadvertently spotlighting the differing ways filmmakers are translating stories from one medium to another. Some seem conscious of not appearing too “stagey”, such is the case with Pieces of a Woman, adapted by director Kornél Mundruczó from a play he co-wrote, which features…
“The Present” Review
The directorial debut of British-Palestinian writer and director Farah Nabulsi, The Present follows the story of Palestinian father Yusef (Saleh Bakri) and his young daughter Yasmine (Mariam Kanj) as they set off across the West Bank to pick up groceries and find an anniversary present for Yusef’s wife. Facing relentless roadblocks, checkpoints, and apathetic IDF…
Hong Sang-soo’s “The Woman Who Ran” Review
While her husband is out of town on a business trip, florist Gam-hee (Kim Min-hee) decides to embark on a venture of her own to reconnect with three different old friends living across Seoul. Although reciting a script, Gam-hee routinely mentions to every friend how her and her husband haven’t spent a day apart since…
Nomadland Review
Nomadland is a curious beast; a sobering look at the ramifications of an ageing, expanding workforce in the gig economy following the 2008 recession, critical of the corporations who have forced people into this position, while also feeling at first glance like it’s pulling some of its punches. At least, that’s how this writer interpreted…
Netflix’s His House Review
When Bol (Sope Dirisu) and his wife Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) arrive in England for the first time, they are coldly greeted by a board of gloomy detention custody officers who offer them a dreary congratulations as they’re released into the country on bail as asylum seekers. Fleeing from their home in South Sudan, Bol and…
I am Samuel Review
The criminalisation of same-sex relationships in Africa is commonplace. In 2013, 38 African countries made homosexuality a crime under the law. Opposition to people of different sexual orientation has become more and more visible, with Kenya being one of those countries where homosexuality is criminalised and socially unacceptable; if convicted, a person could face up…
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