A Ghost Story (Directed by David Lowery, starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck) This is a slow-paced but absorbing film about grief and loss. It is not a horror story in any sense, but let’s call it a romance / drama – it concerns a ghost occupying his home following his sudden death and watching … Continue reading A Few New Reviews: A Ghost Story, American Made, Atomic Blonde and Logan Lucky
'…sits nicely in the cyberpunk genre…’ Ghost in the Shell is a well-established franchise in comics, movies and TV. Just not as live action. The animated movie Ghost in the Shell (1995), based on the 1989 manga series, has been so influential in science fiction cinema that it has become an almost impossible task to … Continue reading The Two Reviews: Ghost in the Shell (2017 Rupert Sanders)
‘…full historical disclosure be damned…’ The mastermind behind Memento and those latter day Batman movies, Christopher Nolan, takes on his first significant British-centred film (it’s his country of birth after all) and there is an inescapable tinge, or should I say cringe, of Union Jack waving at work here – very inappropriate timing one must … Continue reading The Three Reviews: Dunkirk (2017 Christopher Nolan)
The fear, the tension, the anticipation surrounding the proposed release of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi in December of this year is palpable. You can taste it in the air. Speculation about the plot, the quality of the production and the new direction of the canon take up more bytes on the internet … Continue reading Hope for the Future – Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi Preview
The Woodstock Festival in the summer of 1969, as many will attest to, marked a landmark in the American post-war social consciousness. Michael Wadleigh’s award winning documentary Woodstock (1970) brilliantly captured the infamous concert in its entirety, not only showcasing the creative musical talent that marked the decade prior but also informing us of a … Continue reading The American Road Movie: Driving Away From the 1960s Counterculture
‘The Golden Age of Television’ is certainly upon us and one may only subscribe to Netflix, or wherever, these days to witness this. There is a startling depth of choice when it comes to new TV shows from around the world, and within this depth, one may also observe the growing trend for TV shows … Continue reading The Sun Always Shines on TV, Part 2
The second ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ is sinking under the weight of its own superhero films, multiple shared universes and the need to market toys. On the flipside, one could say that ‘The Golden Age of Television’ has been on the rise for two decades now and showing no sign of abating. Film studios have … Continue reading The Sun Always Shines on TV, Part 1
Charlie Chaplin once stated that A Place in the Sun (1951) was ‘the greatest film ever made about America’. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, it won six of them along with numerous other awards and accolades. Produced and directed by George Stevens, and starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters, it is one of … Continue reading Shades of Light and Dark in A Place in the Sun
In 2003 a swords and cannon, swash-buckling epic was released into the cinema. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl made the pirate movie popular again in a way that it hadn’t been since Errol Flynn in Captain Blood (1935) and The Sea Hawk (1940). Pirates of the Caribbean owed at least … Continue reading Lost in the Fog: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
*Please Note: depending on where the reviewer watched them, some of these films were only subject to release in 2017 despite having premiered at film festivals in 2016. Reviews by JJ McDermott Paterson (2016, directed by Jim Jarmusch, starring Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani) A delightfully unexceptional film typical of Jarmusch's minimalist autuership. Set in … Continue reading JJ, Robin and Alan’s Round-up of the Year in Film…So Far
Momentary Cinema 