We Don't Need Two Metaphors

On her wedding day, Grace (Samara Weaving) is still unsure what to make of her soon-to-be in-laws, despite her unwavering commitment to her fiancé Alex (Mark O’Brien). After the ceremony, Grace is told that for her to be truly accepted into her new family, she must play a game. The game she unwittingly chooses is hide and seek, but the variation of the game played by the Le Domas family has an unhealthy finality to it.

I’d say it’s rare for a football documentary to open with anything akin car chase, but that’s how Asif Kapadia elects to start his profile of legendary Argentine footballer Diego Maradona. However, it turns out to sit entirely in line with the crazy and breathless story that follows. It’s an exhilarating opening which elicits comparisons to William Friedkin’s The French Connection and Claude Lelouch’s short film C’etait un rendez-vous but here, thanks to the accompanying 80s inspired soundtrack (Todd Terje’s Delorean Dynamite), transports the audience back to 1984 and Maradona’s arrival in Naples. He has just been signed by local football club Napoli for a then world record fee of £6.9 million and was met at the Stadio San Paulo, Napoli’s home ground, by a fervent hysteria of fans and journalists that would come to typify his eight-year spell at the Italian club.

A Star is Born may have won plaudits and accolades in the last few months, but a star truly is born in Wild Rose , the story of an aspiring Glaswegian country singer, and her name is Jessie Buckley. Buckley stars as Rose-Lynn Harlan, a live-wire who dreams of Nashville and all of its musical heritage and glory. After a brief spell at her majesty’s pleasure, she is more determined than ever to achieve her goal, but must face up to the realities waiting for her at home: her exasperated mother (Julie Walters) and her two young children, Wynonna and Lyle.

After his Oscar winning space roller coaster ride, Alfonso Cuaron doesn’t so much come crashing down to Earth as land gracefully, so as not to drown out the sounds of swashing water that open his latest feature. Roma is set in a late 1970’s Mexico City and in the townhouse of a seemingly well to do Spanish family and their Mexican house staff. Principal maid and nanny Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) aims to ensure the smooth running of the family’s life. However, political unease in the city is growing and significant change is on the horizon much closer to home too.

Spoiler Warning: Lots of spoilers ahead Knowing very little about a film before watching it opens up the possibility of giving over time to a film that thoroughly squanders it, but also the possibility of being swept up in a film with no expectations or suggestion of where it will take you. In the case of Vox Lux , knowing little more than the title and cast members led to being wholly unprepared for the film’s startling opening. That intense reaction is indicative of the entire experience crafted by writer and director Brady Corner. This is a film of extremes. Extreme pain and extreme joy; extreme highs and extreme lows. All presented to question and challenge the acceptable boundaries of 21st century celebrity culture. Vox Lux opens with a school shooting in 1999; Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) survives but with spinal injuries. After singing at a candlight vigil soon after, Celeste launches on a path to popstardom with her sister Eleanor (Stacy Martin) and produced (Jude Law) in tow....

Now almost a decade into his feature filmmaking career, perennial London Film Festival favourite Ben Wheatley returns with Happy New Year, Colin Burstead : perhaps his warmest film to date and a perfect sweary antidote to the usual festive offerings. Colin Burstead (an excellent Neil Maskell) has hired a grand Dorset castle to bring his family together for a New Year's party. Like every family, they don't always get along but the Burstead are perhaps more resentful than most. So far so Agatha Christie but there's no chance of the butler being murdered here as the Burstead family are far too embittered to actually murder anyone; it’s as if their resentment for each other would only be exceeded by the resentment towards someone who no longer had to endure the curt and strained conversations.

A spiritualist, an artist and a geologist walk into a abandoned mining town. Even if you have heard of that joke before, you’ve probably never heard it told in quite the same manner as Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn tell it in their latest. Funded through Kickstarter, Two Plains & a Fancy is the first self-proclaimed ‘spa western’, which is an accurate description that doesn’t begin to hint at what is to come. It’s 1893 and the aforementioned trio (Marianna McClellan, Benjamin Crotty, Laetitia Dosch) have travelled to Colorado in search of the region's famous hot springs. What they don't know is that the price of silver has abruptly fallen the once thriving region is facing a severe downturn.

The Social Network is a great film about the birth of social media but in the 8 years since that film’s release, there haven’t been too many great films about social media and our relationship with it. When not too busy gruesomely disposing of its characters, 2015’s Unfriended addressed bullying and the pervasive permanence of online activity from a viewpoint inside computer screens, the eyes of each character gazing down into the audience; it was a gimmick, but a well executed gimmick. Searching builds on that gimmick and develops into a film that brings to mind the unreliable storytelling of David Fincher’s Gone Girl and the teenage woes of Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen . Two years on from the death of his wife Pamela (Sara Sohn), David Kim (John Cho) is raising their daughter Margot (Michelle La) on his own. When Margot doesn’t return home one evening, David grows ever more worried and an investigation, led by detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) is launched...

Fresh from a win and a multitude of plaudits at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Matt Palmer’s debut feature arrives on Netflix, lying in wait to test the nerves of any unsuspecting viewer. Expectant father Vaughn (Jack Lowden) somewhat reluctantly agrees to a hunting trip with childhood friend Marcus (Martin McCann) in northern Scotland. A night of heavy drinking in the village pub leads to devastating consequences during the following morning’s woodland hunt.

In the feverishly franchise focussed Hollywood of 2018, the days of a 3-year wait between Star Wars movies are long gone and this fourth film in as many years arrives a fraction over 5 months after the last adventure through hyperspace. Solo: A Star Wars Story brings the earlier years of Han Solo to the big screen with Alden Ehrenreich stepping into the role that Harrison Ford has inhabited for 40 years, which doesn’t sound daunting at all <gulp>. After being thrown out of the Empire’s pilot academy, a young Han Solo finds himself on the front line of the Empire’s march to bring new planets under its control. Sensing the limited prospects in a future as an infantry soldier, Solo talks his way onto a crew of thieves, led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), who have their own orders to follow. Image via Lucasfilm

A late addition to 2017’s autumn festival circuit, Custody went on to pick up awards at Venice, San Sebastián and Miami film festivals on its way to UK cinemas. Expanding his Oscar nominated short, Xavier Legrand writes and directs a story of the bitter fight between two parents and their two children caught up in the torrent of animosity.

Not content with producing a recent string of deceptively perceptive dramas that any director would be envious of, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda has changed gear for his latest picture. The Third Murder (a seemingly innocuous but very deliberate title) may technically be a murder mystery but in Kore-eda’s hands, it plays as a much more unconventional take on that familiar genre: a story in which the neatly tied loose ends are thoroughly unravelled. Factory worker Misumi follows his boss down to the riverbank one evening, a hammer in hand. Once the violent blows have been dealt and the body burned, Misumi is promptly arrested and confesses to the murder. Having already served time in prison for a double murder some years ago, he’s almost certain to receive the death penalty. His defence attorney Shigemori (Masaharu Fukuyama) begins searching for any detail or technicality that might spare his client from his fate, but soon begins to question Misumi’s apparently ce...

To go out on a limb (although all are welcome to join), I would say that 2017 has been the best year of film releases in as long as I've been deliberating each 'year in film'. Not only in terms of the quality but also in the range of genres, styles and voices. I'll limit myself to 20, but I could've easily gone to 30+ and found films that I have a lot of time for and may have made lists from previous years. As ever, I've gone by UK release dates (theatrical where available). Full reviews (where available) are linked in each entry.

A father and his daughter Thelma walk across a frozen lake; she pauses momentarily to watch the silvery fish slinking through the icy water below. Later, a fawn crosses their path; the father raises his rifle to shoot, but turns it towards his daughter just ahead of him. He holds his aim but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It’s a brilliant opening – one of the year’s best – to Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s fourth film Thelma , his first foray into genre cinema. It’s unsettling and gives Trier a blank canvas on which to map out his chilling sci-fi drama; the unexpected should be expected at every turn.

A three and a quarter hour documentary about a library may not sound like the most enticing of prospects and yet, Frederick Wiseman’s glimpse into the comings, goings and inner workings of the New York Public Library is riveting and absolutely worth taking the time to savour. As libraries go, the New York Public Library with its 209 branches is a million miles away from the stuffy village sites that would spring to my mind. Wiseman takes his camera to many of the locations found on the streets, corners and in the suburbs of the continuously unfurling city. He’s there simply to observe how people use the facilities available to them and how the management work to continually provide their patrons with the means to live, learn and connect with the wider world.

Now here’s that rarest of things, a film you never knew you wanted: a high-school exam heist thriller. Whilst Hollywood faces continuous accusations of lacking ideas, Thailand has delivered Bad Genius: an inventive and thrilling caper that has already wowed audiences on home soil and across much of southeast Asia. Keen to settle in quickly at her new school, Lynn (newcomer Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) begins to tutor her new friend Grace (Eisaya Hosuwan). Tutoring quickly turns to cheating and as Grace’s grades improve, more of Lynn’s classmates want her to provide the answers to their exams, and they’re willing to pay good money for her help.

There’s a specific joy that comes from watching a film with no preconceptions and being completely won over by it and, in the modern era of lengthy marketing campaigns, it is becoming an occurrence to savour. The film on this occasion was Princess Cyd , from Chicago based writer and director Stephen Cone. Jessie Pinnick stars as teenager Cyd, who travels to Chicago to spend the summer with her aunt Miranda (Rebecca Spence), a famous novelist. Cyd and Miranda haven’t seen each other since the funeral of their mother/sister almost a decade ago.

A total of 242 feature films will screen at the 61st BFI London Film Festival in October; 242 films including 28 World premieres, 9 International premieres and 34 European premieres. The previously announced  Breathe  and  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri  will bookend the festival and there are many treats in-store for the days in between.  In Part 1, I looked at the films from the main competitions and gala screenings. Outside of the competitions and galas, other films are placed in one of the following strands:     LOVE                   DEBATE                   LAUGH   DARE                    THRILL                     CULT JOURNEY               CREATE         ...

A total of 242 feature films will screen at the 61st BFI London Film Festival in October; 242 films including 28 World premieres, 9 International premieres and 34 European premieres. The previously announced Breathe  and  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri  will bookend the festival and there are many treats in-store for the days in between. Here are some picks from my first perusal at the full line-up; click on the title of each film to go to the BFI festival page for the film.

Barely a day goes by without an announcement of an upcoming sequel, remake or reboot (and even the occasional squeakquel) as the Hollywood studios scramble to find their next box office smash. Accompanying these announcements are choruses of exasperated sighs, pages of disgruntled tweets and cries of “Is nothing sacred?” from movie goers who are growing increasingly frustrated with the repetitive nature of the films making their way to cinemas from Tinseltown. Hollywood’s propensity for sequels and the like is nothing new, but there has been a noticeable change in the last year or so with studios becoming more aggressive (or perhaps desperate) in their pursuit of that lucrative pay day. Fox has reportedly invested a whopping $900 million in James Cameron’s three Avatar sequels. Before the first film had made its way into cinemas, Warner Bros. announced that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them would be the first of five new films in J.K. Rowling’s wizarding wo...