Sunny days are rare in the UK during the Autumn, but who needs them when Ryu Jun-yeol is in London and his bright personality and smile brightens up the day? At one of London’s hotels, the actor greets us with a warm handshake. As we sit comfortably on the Victorian looking sofa, he enthusiastically invites…
Category: Film
4th London East Asia Film Festival: Opening Night Gala – Exit Review
Up amongst Seoul’s rollercoaster of a skyline, Yong-nam (Jo Jung-suk) and Eui-Ju (Lim Yoona) are hurdling from building to building desperately trying to outrun and outsmart the toxic fog slowly following them across the city. Opening up this year’s London East Asia Film Festival, Lee Sang-geun’s feature debut Exit is a joyful, lively but somewhat…
63rd BFI London Film Festival: Moffie Review
Tucked up in their dorm beds, sandwiched between lumpy mattresses and itchy blankets, South African soldiers are swapping stories. One of them starts to tell the story of two soldiers found kissing in a bathroom stall – ‘Moffies’ they’re derogatorily named. After being caught the pair are dragged out and thrown in front of their…
63rd BFI London Film Festival: The Last Black Man in San Francisco Review
Balancing together on the same beat-up skateboard, Jimmie (Jimmie Fails) and his best friend Montgomery (Jonathan Majors) fly through the streets of San Francisco. A symphony of soaring strings and thunderous, belting horns explodes behind them – over the top of which, a soapbox preacher urges that ‘We are these homes! We built them!… This…
63rd BFI London Film Festival: The Dude in Me Review
Body swap comedies are beloved for their bold and ludicrous takes on what happens when opposites switch. Defined by the occurrence of two characters swapping physical states but maintaining their prior personalities, body swap films offer up absurd and fanciful interpretations of what can happen when you take characters and place them in an extreme…
Sesang Review
Sesang – translated as the Korean word for ‘world’ – follows the lives of two twenty-something creatives Nari (Kim Jin-young) and Han-chul (Han Jong-hoon) as they try to navigate their own separate careers after falling out of love. The former lovers reunite after a year apart when Han-chul visits Nari in New York, where Nari…
76th Venice International Film Festival: Lingua Franca Review
As the Trump reign rages on, the illegal immigrants are solidly placed among the most marginalized and prosecuted groups in the USA, even though the government’s zero-tolerance policy hasn’t quite quenched the numbers of those seeking a brighter future in what used to be seen as the land of the free. In 2017, the estimate…
76th Venice International Film Festival: Chola (Shadow of Water) Review
Chola is an uncompromising and uncomfortable film that attempts to tackle the alarming sexually oppressed female experience of modern India. Yet, while writer/director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan pretties and dresses up the journey with wide, ambitiously beautiful shots of rural Kerala, the destination is left jarringly raw and brutally morbid. What starts as a charmingly simple…
76th Venice International Film Festival: Atlantis Review
The year is 2025 – just one year after a war has ended between Ukraine and Russia. A war that has left eastern Ukraine collapsing into a state of disrepair. Hundreds of flooded mines have left local wells and rivers poisoned beyond repair, in a few years this region will be void of any drinking…
76th Venice International Film Festival: Just 6.5 Metri Shisho Nim Review
For over a decade, Iran has been witnessing a rise in the number of drug addicts; drug abuse, which is often concentrated on the use of opium and its derivative substances, has risen double in the country since 2017 and even with strict laws and punishments, it seems like there is still no successful solution…
VIEW OF THE ARTS 