Not knowing what’s to come is intriguing. Suspense is the lifeblood of a good story. I love walking into the cinema not knowing anything about the film I’m about to watch. It doesn’t happen often, hardly ever if I’m totally honest. Trailers nowadays spoil most of the plot points. It is such a different experience viewing a film without any preconceived notions. So I was really excited sitting down for 'A Quiet Passion' in a cosy little cinema just off Oxford Street.
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The film is a period drama, not my favourite genre. A biopic, even worse. About the life of Emily Dickinson, a poet! I chuckle to myself, remembering my experience with another poetry film, 'Paterson', a few weeks ago, and readying myself for a lengthy two hours. Within a few minutes the film has me truly chuckling at the snappy performances and witty dialogue firing left and right. The Dickinson family has you engaged from the first moment.

The cinematography is intimate, yet distant. Dickinson hardly ever left her homestead, she never married and turned into a recluse in later years, so most of the film takes place inside the house. The mostly stagnant camera captures that claustrophobic feel well, which draws even more attention to scenes where it is moving, like the 360 degree pan near the start and end of the film, showing the family (or what’s left of it) in the living-room. The one thing I could have lived without was the aging family portraits to show the passage of time, thereby introducing new actors for certain characters. Instead of showing every single member of the family by themselves a family portrait would’ve cut down on this rather repetitive sequence.

As most biopics I found 'A Quiet Passion' to be checklist-y, jumping from one seemingly important or well-known event to the next. The film doesn’t have as much flow to the narrative as I'd have liked. But the captivating performances more than make up for any shortcomings in that regard. Even the poetry readings Cynthia Nixon does throughout the film in form of a voice-over are interesting and fitting. A stark contrast to what I thought of the same technique used in 'Paterson'. Nixon delivers the prose eloquently, keeping her read truthful, vibrant and engaging.

Overall solid performances and witty dialogue make 'A Quiet Passion' an entertaining framework for Emily Dickinson’s poetry.

As great as its performances is the cinematography of 'Jawbone', beautifully captured by Radcliffe. Every shot elicits an emotional response in the viewer. From the sweat soaked close ups to the cold and lonely outdoors. The cinematography alone had me on an emotional journey.

Overall 'Jawbone' was more than just a boxing film for me. Yes, there is a lot of working out and it ends with your typical boxing match, but there is more to this film. Jimmy is fighting his opponent as much as he is fighting himself in that ring, throughout the entire film actually. His constant battle with alcohol, his issues with asking for help or even accepting help. We all need help, no matter if we’re trying to overcome outer or inner demons. The physical tale is just its outer layer, with a human story at its core. And that makes 'Jawbone' and Jimmy McCabe relatable to everyone.

In an almost parallel storyline, with again an esthetics that brilliantly captures the 90s, we’re also acquainted with adult Massimo (Valerio Mastandrea), a reserved journalist, who must finally tackle his childhood trauma as he prepares to sell his parents’ home.

This home is the place of the film’s inciting incident: Massimo’s mother’s death. Though its place in the film makes a lot of sense, and Massimo’s family’s gauche way of handling the situation is completely human, the consequences on Massimo’s adult storyline (what is shown of it) was more difficult to fully grasp. And though this was the entire point of the film, Massimo’s weaknesses as an adult, in spite of having worked in Sarajevo, held a good career as a sports journalist as well as experiencing tremendous success when responding to a reader about motherly love (or lack thereof. This moment is by the way the only comic relief of the film), made it hard to fully route for his character. How can an intelligent adult be in that much denial without anyone ever saying anything? How can a child who seems so observant become an adult who, in spite of his job, accepts what he is told as pure truth without ever challenging his father or re-examining the facts? He of course eventually does, but it’s nearly impossible to believe it would have taken him that long, especially given his professional background and his apparently otherwise normal mental health, give or take a few panic attacks (which one might expect of someone who has seen the horrors of war first hand).

This aside, the film, childhood and adult moments alike, manages to bring us back to our own childhood fairy tales, (for me, strangely, it was Gina Lollobrigida’s Blue Fairy from a 1970s Pinocchio).  Seeing childhood creatures still haunting adulthood, though outlandish to the logical mind, may be highly relatable to many.

Similarly, one of my favourite moments showed teen Massimo (Dario Dal Pero) visit a wealthy friend in a gorgeous old house, and sitting still as the other teen misbehaves with his mother (the wonderful Emmanuelle Devos who I was hoping would play a more important part in the film). The scene was fairly random and only relevant to the overall story as it showed Massimo’s yearning for a mother persist throughout his teens. Though it does bring narrative value to the film, it doesn’t seem essential to tell the story. But there is something almost otherworldly, something deliciously French and Italian and which in a way also captures the emotional stakes of the film so much more than many slices of Massimo’s adult life. It is that sense of nostalgia and “out of time-ness” which kept me hooked, and later led me home daydreaming, a head full of fond memories of the past and longing for the magic moments ahead.

A gorgeous and heartfelt mess.

All that aside, the premise was genius, and watching a pregnant serial killer made for a few deliciously unusual and disturbing scenes. It also made me very curious how men would react to the film, as the tradition of the helpless and highly sexualised female victim is now cleverly replaced by two sexually predatory men (one of them still living with his mother), in addition to a tough spinstress type and a young woman (Gemma Whelan) who will refuse to be a victim. I also imagine that one specific scene might be specifically painful to male audiences.

The choice of locations was also great: starting with a strange animal shop full of snakes and spiders, we move to a 70s disco night at a pub, with crucial moments later taking place at a climbing club and at a Halloween party. All greatly enhanced by Ryan Eddleston’s cinematography, which hits the perfect balance of beautiful, disturbing, realistic and almost grotesque.

Performances were also strong overall, with a few great scenes, though my favorite was Jo Hartley as Ruth’s midwife, as her utter sensitivity and truthfulness anchored in the tragic reality of the story, yet (and therefore) become the only character to give me the chuckles during the film.

The saving grace of 'Bitter Harvest', aside from its vitally important premise, is its cinematography. Milsome beautifully captures the lush tranquillity of the village the film opens with as well as the desolate hopelessness later on. His cinematography was the absolute highlight of the film for me.
Overall 'Bitter Harvest' filled me with regret and sadness. Not, as intended, due to witnessing millions of people starving to death, but the waste of opportunity at giving this important story the attention it deserves. I want this film to be great, to be a must see showcase of what happened, but I feel it does a disservice to this rather important event in history. The overly melodramatic script is its undoing, eliciting laughter where gravitas should reign. 'Bitter Harvest' doesn’t come close to the epic it wants to be, and wanting to be that epic ultimately sets it up to fail. Kudos to Mendeluk for bringing this story and its events to the big screen. I just can’t help but wish for better execution in bringing this story to life.

Spoilers for 'John Wick' (the first one) but then it’s not much more than a movie about an angry Keanu Reeves killing everyone he meets, so maybe not worry about it too much.

Anyway, chapter 2 takes place in the immediate aftermath of the first movie, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) has killed everyone he set out to kill plus a few people who were dumb enough to try and kill him in return, and now he’s looking for his stolen car. We open with him finding it in the process of eliminating another branch of the Russian mafia in a pretty epic gun fight slash car chase sequence just to tie up loose ends before we move on.
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John goes home with his new dog and prepares to settle in to retirement once more, but unfortunately for him he barely has time to put his feet up before there’s knock at his door. It seems word has gotten out that he’s been on a killing spree and some have presumed this means he is back to work and an old acquaintance is at his door to call in a debt he is owed. John turns him down and our new villain proceeds to aggressively threaten him into accepting the deal despite everyone around him being able to see what a stupid idea that is.

 This is the main problem of the film, the first 'John Wick' was about the idiot son of a gangster accidentally making enemies of the most dangerous assassin who ever lived because he’s an idiot. In this film we have a relatively uninteresting sociopath gangster (or something, I’m not actually sure what his deal was) deliberately and repeatedly making enemies of the most dangerous assassin who ever lived because presumably he’s an even bigger idiot.

This is actually a huge disconnect for me, the first movie was a clever revenge story that whilst the “bad guys” were clearly bad guys our hero was also basically a bad guy and the script wouldn’t have required too much manipulation to turn it into a horror movie where John Wick relentless hunts and murders a bunch of people who whilst far from being saints don’t necessarily deserve a gruesome death.
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Coupled with some amazing fight sequences and a return to form for Keanu, seriously he was born to play this character, the first movie was kind of an unexpected surprise. Simplistic maybe but it did what it did to perfection and constructed an elaborate world with it’s own mythology and rules that though we only scrapped the surface, was clearly very well thought out and opened up an infinite amount of possibility.

This time around we get to see a lot more of this secret world but as with any mystery the more you know the less interesting it is. The move to another branch of the Continental in Rome is almost meaningless and Lawrence Fishbourne commanding an army of homeless people and pigeons is actually kind of silly, they only serve to over complicate the world. In addition it all makes the rules of both this world and the assassins guild within it much less clear. There’s a cool scene where Keanu and Common walk through a crowded area covertly firing silenced pistols at each other, and it’s a fun idea, but why do they do it, from a practical standpoint.

This “secret” society doesn’t seem too concerned with secrecy, the number of people aware of it’s existence seems to be growing beyond it’s assassin base and the assassins themselves don’t seem too concerned about openly firing their guns in public, starting fist fights in the street, and equate wandering into a building and shooting everyone they meet as the same thing as a meticulously planned assassination. So the world has been dumbed down a bit and the villain has been dumbed down a lot and it’s impossible to have the same unique impact as the first movie, so … did I like this? I feel like I shouldn’t like this.

Okay, so on a positive side it is basically more of the same from the first movie, cool action, interesting world building, cool action, Keanu Reeves owning the show and cool action. I mean it’s mostly cool action, that’s kind of why we’re here, and it does it well just not quite as well as the first movie and as I’ve said it’s impossible to create the same experience a second time around. This is basically a less interesting plot with less likeable characters. It comes to life a little when John becomes the target of the not-so-secret assassins society and we meet a handful of seemingly unique characters who come after him but they all just turn out to be nameless stunt people with guns for shooting and fists for punching and it’s just a whole lot of nothing.

So it’s good for what is more or less a two hour fight scene but I suppose you’d do just as well watching the first one again. You won’t be disappointed but you probably won’t be rushing to watch it a second time.

Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) is a hustling anything-for-a-dollar businessman currently trying, and failing, to sell milkshake makers as he drives across the country. Just one in a long line of ventures dampening his spirits and putting a strain on his marriage. Out of the blue he receives an order for six machines to a single restaurant and assuming it’s a mistake he calls them to confirm. This is when he learns of a little family burger business called McDonalds.

Infinitely curious he drives straight out to the restaurant and meets with the two brothers who founded what he immediately recognises as a revolution in food service. He learns their story and simply can’t get it out of his head. Now obsessed he pursues the McDonald brothers relentlessly with the idea of franchising the business and despite their reservations we all know that the McDonalds brand expands beyond even Ray’s expectations.

Personally I found this movie a fascinating insight into a business world I didn’t previously understand, an intriguing tale of the creation of one of the most recognised brands around the world and a well crafted character study that Keaton holds expertly. And whilst it doesn’t do any of those specific elements to perfection it juggles them all effortlessly. ​

The true story of Richard and Mildred Loving who fought for their marriage to be recognised in there home of Virginia where interracial marriage was still outlawed. The case catches the attention of the ACLU and some ambitious lawyers who push it all the way to the Supreme Court where it challenges the very foundations of American society.
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The story is told almost entirely from the perspectives of the Lovings which gives us this curious outsiders look on the bigger picture as Richard and Mildred aren’t marching on the capital they just want to live their lives. It’s also interesting to see their lawyers, who whilst on the right side of history are clearly viewing this as a once in a lifetime career opportunity they can’t afford to let slip through their fingers.

It’s a strange almost cynical look at the whole issue and it’s actually kind of interesting to see this kind of story told without being grandiose about the matter or leaning too heavily on the message. It sort of grounds it, we’re just looking at people who want to be themselves and why shouldn’t they be able to? It’s surreal that this happened not that long ago.
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Unfortunately just because something is historically interesting doesn’t necessarily make it dramatically interesting, and whilst it would be wrong to inject a load of fake drama into such a serious story, after the initial set up the Lovings pretty much just go about their lives whilst all the more interesting civil rights issues happen somewhere else.

This is entirely fair to the story, the Lovings weren’t superheroes, they were humble people who wanted what was fair. The impact that would have on the country is more of a background detail. But as I say this doesn’t make for a particularly thrilling narrative, even the local sheriff who is set up as their antagonist in the beginning of the film just disappears from the story about halfway through and we’re left with a lot of tension that never actually amounts to anything.

​I have to say that I found myself wanting to like this film more than I did, though don’t dismiss the film entirely, it is a very important story beautifully told with some powerfully subtle performances from Ruth Nega and Joel Edgerton who completely draw in your sympathies. So it’s kind of average but it’s on the high end of average, and historical significance aside it’s ultimately a really sweet story of love conquering all that deserves to be told.

Based on a true story, prospector Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey) has gone from a serious player in a swanky office to a desperate hustler working out of a bar in just a few short years. Down on his luck and willing to try anything to turn it around, on a whim and a dream he ventures to Indonesia in search of an old contact to try and persuade him to go for one big score.
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The two of them team up to search the jungles for the perfect spot to dig and as soon as it seems they’ve found it they are dragged into the ruthless world that is the business of mining. Viewed as disposable small time hustlers by the big companies, and exploitable by their rivals, we see the story largely in flashbacks as Kenny is being interviewed by the FBI and we know something somewhere is eventually going to go very wrong.

No spoilers because the big hook of the film is this curious dread the audience feel as Kenny’s venture goes from good to better to best, and you wonder just how and why this story of triumph could possibly come crashing down around him. McConaughey is great as the hapless Kenny, clearly in over his head but also aware that he holds all the cards.
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Kenny drinks too much, smokes too much and has what could comfortably be described as a loose grip on morality, but he is our hero and he is deep down a good person. Portraying this kind of deeply flawed but ultimately good character seems effortless to McConaughey and it’s what we’re all here for, and though the rest of the cast are far from slouching around this is McConaughey’s show. You can feel yourself willing Kenny to be a better person as the film plays out before you,
desperately wanting him to rise to the top of the increasingly rotten garbage pile gathering around him.

But this isn’t a perfect movie even if it is very close. Stylistically it’s lacking a little something in the direction and cinematography and there’s no real stand out “you have to see this” moment that a character led film like this kind of needs. It is well worth seeing though.

What is worth noting is that this film was not what I was expecting on any level. The subject matter is deadly serious, Conor's interactions with the Monster are a truly unreal experience, a level of dreamlike surrealism whose messages reach much deeper than you might be prepared for. There's no family friendly sweetness to be found here, Conor is dealing with some serious issues and there's no sugar coating any of it.

This is both a compliment and a complaint in many ways, it's a strange film that I wasn't mentally prepared for at the time but it was undoubtedly compelling and if you can get on board with the symbolism you'll find an extremely enriching emotional experience.

And therein lies the bulk of the issue with 'The Purge: Election Year'. Despite a promising concept, the film - as well as the franchise at large - is unable to fully live up to that potential, offering moments of brilliance amid a sea of wasted opportunity and unanwered questions that threaten to open gaping plot-holes. Why, when all crime is legal, do people only focus on murder? Would having a 12-hour Purge once a year really allow people to curb their psychotic urges? If crime is legal, why does everybody wear masks? Why do Purgers not go for each other? Were those annoying female characters actually of school age and why did they drive around in the most conspicuous car ever?

With Election Year, James DeMonaco clearly tried to inject the level of humour and satire people called for as vehemently as they called for a broader spectrum of chaos after the original film, most of it feels tacked on and goes nowhere. The rest of it has a hit or miss ratio that would put numerous baseball players out of work. There is an attempt at a message, but far too much of it is lost beneath the violent - as well as haunting - visuals that they seem to be trying to rally against.

The inclusion of Edwin Hodge from the first two films, finally given a name here, will try to convince you that there was a plan the whole time, but behind the smoke and mirrors lies a constant state of course-correction. As such, the franchise could - and most likely will - outlive us all. Whether it actually should though is no doubt a question that will be on most people's minds upon leaving the cinema, especially given how neatly Election Year could serve as the solid conclusion.

Anyway, no spoilers, but the story of Lee trying to reconnect with his old life, reluctant though it may be, and having to figure out what it means to have family again is brilliantly realised by Casey and Lucas, each of them drawing equal levels of sympathy and frustration from the audience.

This is a subtle character piece and can feel slow at times but I don’t think I was ever bored, and whilst we’re not building to a particularly dramatic conclusion we don’t really need to. Most of the drama has happened outside of our main story and we’re watching some beautifully portrayed characters dealing with the various issues in their past, some very immediate, some old wounds and some so deep they never truly go away.