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(Release Info London schedule; March 9th, 2017, Electric Cinema, 18:30) "Wonder Wheel" "Wonder Wheel" tells the story of four characters whose lives intertwine amid the hustle and bustle of 'The Coney Island Amusement Park' in the 1950s. Ginny (Kate Winslet), a melancholy, emotionally volatile former actress now working as a waitress in a clam house; Humpty (Jim Belushi), Ginny’s rough-hewn carousel operator husband; Mickey (Justin Timberlake), a handsome young lifeguard who dreams of becoming a playwright; and Carolina (Juno Temple), Humpty’s long-estranged daughter, who's now hiding out from gangsters at her father’s apartment. Reeling after the emotional breakdown brought on by her divorce, Ginny finds solace by marrying fellow lost soul Humpty, who's grieving from the death of his wife, and the departure of Carolina, who ran away to marry a local hoodlum. While Humpty has problems with alcohol and holding onto a job, he provides Ginny and her troubled son Richie (Jack Gore) with a home, albeit one in a cramped apartment in the midst of the cacophony of 'Coney Island famed 'Wonder Wheel'. Although Ginny finds a degree of stability with Humpty. She despairs at giving up her dreams for a waitressing job, her marriage to a man more interested in fishing than the finer things, and her inability to help Richie, who has his own emotional problems. After her marriage to her gangster husband ends, Carolina is questioned by 'The FBI' and knowing too much, it's imperative her ex-husband gets rid of her. Frightened and on the run, Carolina seeks out her father. Feeling she will not be traced there as the two have not spoken in years, he takes her in. When Mickey sees Ginny walking forlornly alone on the beach one night, he approaches her, and they soon begin an affair. For Mickey, a relationship with an unhappily married woman flatters his romantic self-image, but he’s not necessarily thinking long-term; Ginny, on the other hand, soon looks to Mickey as a lifeline with the potential to permanently rescue her from all the mistakes and disappointments of her past life. Humpty is similarly rejuvenated by the reemergence of Carolina in his life. Having a daughter around to love provides surprising joy, as well as a newfound purpose: setting aside money for her to attend night school. However, Ginny and Humpty’s precarious new hopes and dreams are soon threatened when Mickey lays eyes on Carolina for the first time. "Wonder Wheel" is a dramatic tale of passion, violence, and betrayal that plays out against the picturesque tableau of 1950s Coney Island. Whereas women have always been more open about their emotions. Allen consciously writes his larger-than-life female roles, like Ginny in "Wonder Wheel", with the idea of providing challenges that only the most gifted actresses can rise to. Without question, Ginny in "Wonder Wheel" is the latest in a long line of complex, richly observed and troubled Woody Allen heroines. When we first meet Ginny, she's working in a Coney Island clam house, trapped in a loveless marriage, and carrying the remnants of a painful past. Ginny has a tough life. She scuffled her way up, has illusions about being an actress, and ended up marrying a gentlemen she really loved who loved her, and they had a child. But Ginny couldn’t resist the temptation to have an affair with an actor who's in a show with her, and it caused a complete breakup of her marriage. She realized only when it was too late, the consequences of her infidelity and her actions. Then, she started falling apart, was drinking, and her work suffered. Ginny believed that she was a good actress and could have had a career were it not for the fact that she ruined her marriage, but deep down the reality was that she was never any good. That moment of discovering that actually she's a dreadful actress luckily never came around. In some ways that makes it more tragic. At this low point in her life, Ginny met Humpty, who's suffering himself, because his wife had died and his daughter Carolina had run off and married a local hoodlum. Even though Ginny and Humpty are able to help each other get back on their feet, eventually Ginny realizes that, by marrying Humpty, she has settled into a life that will never satisfy her. Now that she’s over the crisis, she starts to understand that she doesn’t really love this man. He's a rock when she needed it and she helps him get off alcohol, but that’s not what love is; love is what she had with her first husband. And she yearns for something more exciting than the practical aid that she and Humpty have supplied each other. She feels she’s going under and her life is ebbing away. She’s a bit of a lost soul. It’s as though she spent a large part of her life walking on a tightrope, and she’s just fallen one too many times. Now she’s slithering along the tightrope, neither standing nor really falling anymore. Humpty is very weak to women, and he can’t be alone. He lost both of the women in his life at the same time. He was devastated, and it sent him into a drunken spiral. When Ginny turned up, she reached in and pulled him out of that abyss. And now even though he yells and carries on, it’s Ginny who has the control, because he knows he can’t lose her. If he loses Ginny, he’ll die. Ginny is not able to help Richie, her son from her first marriage, who has begun to act out by setting fires all around Coney Island. It’s very sad because on some level Ginny does feel like she’s ruined Richie’s life, and she does feel like it’s all her fault that he’s a moody miserable kid who sets fires. She wants to do more for him, but doesn’t quite know how. She’s so consumed with the guilt that she’s screwed up his life by cheating on his father, that it seems to disable her from being able to parent him. The couple’s routine is broken by the unexpected arrival of Humpty’s daughter Carolina, who Humpty hasn’t seen or spoken to in five years. Carolina is a girl who's, by the local standards, very beautiful. At some point, a local hoodlum made a play for her and took her to places where the local boys couldn’t take her, and bought her furs and jewels. She was seduced by the glamour and they end up getting married. For a while they've a nice time together, but eventually things started to get more contentious in the marriage, and they broke up. Soon after, the FBI got to her and threatened her, so she told them some things about her ex-husband’s business. At this point, she becomes a target for her ex-husband and his hit men, as she knows too much and they want to get rid of her. Carolina is a young, hungry creature who got swept up in a universe that felt fast, wonderful and exciting and made her feel glamorous, almost like a magpie to something that twinkles. There’s a fragility to her that magical, but also dangerous, as she wasn’t wise enough to see the darkness her husband brought into her life. Fearing for her life, and with no other place to go, Carolina reaches out to Humpty, reasoning that, as her ex-husband knows how bitter her relationship is with her father, his home is the last place he would search for her. But maybe it's also the subconscious, or even conscious, feeling that her father would protect her. She goes into it with a childlike feeling that he will hopefully take her back, but she has no idea what she’s going to walk in on, and doesn’t necessarily think about the consequences that her arrival might bring to him. In her innocence, her eyes tend to look on the bright side of life, and look forward and not backward. While Humpty is initially unwilling to forgive Carolina, he quickly softens. With Carolina, Humpty has a much richer, deeper love than he’s experiencing with Ginny. As soon as she arrives, it's like, boom. He's filled with hope, love and purpose again. He has a second chance in life. From then on, it becomes all about saving extra money so that Carolina can go to night school and have a better life. Ginny does not appreciate Humpty’s reactivated passion. She gets annoyed with Humpty because she’s seeing a side of him that she’s never seen before. If Humpty can be that adoring of his daughter, why has he never been that adoring of Ginny? He’s never doted on her and adored her the way that he does with Carolina. Humpty doesn’t need much to keep him happy. When Carolina comes along, suddenly his very small world is complete, but Ginny wants so much more. Ginny’s deliverance comes in the form of Mickey, a handsome young former sailor working the summer as a lifeguard on 'Coney Island Beach', preparing to get his Masters in drama in the fall at 'New York University'. Mickey’s great wish is to be a playwright. He looks up to all the classic pieces of art that have come through that world in the theatre. Because of his aspirations, he really likes to observe, and clock the humanity of what’s going on around him. Somewhere in his mind, he believes the people he’s observing are going to become the characters of the great play he’ll write one day. Mickey is also the narrator of "Wonder Wheel". As the movie progresses, you start to question how reliable a narrator Mickey is. Because he clearly sees all these people that he is intertwined with in a very specific way. That's the just the way he sees them. Like the old saying that there’s three sides to every story: the two sides, and then there’s the truth, which is probably somewhere in between. One person Mickey pays special attention to is Ginny, as he spies her walking forlornly on the beach. He tunes into her dramatic melancholy immediately and finds it oddly appealing. Mickey is a hopeless romantic, and he finds flaws beautiful. That night he tells Ginny that there’s something tragic about her, and he means that as a sort of compliment. But he falls more in love with the tragedy of Ginny than with Ginny herself. He likes that she’s in emotional peril. Mickey’s in love with the mystique of writing, of living in the village, of having an affair with or maybe even marrying an older woman. All these romantic notions of a struggling writer are appealing to him, as he tends to romanticize everything. It's not a tragic flaw; it may even be an endearing flaw. The saddest part of his life is that he’s probably not going to be the author that he wants to be. Mickey makes a couple of attempts at writing and maybe there’ll be some mediocre things he turns out, but he’s not destined to be Euripides or Eugene O’Neill. Up until she meets Mickey, Ginny had managed a life without hope, with a little help from headache pills and an occasional nip from a whiskey bottle hidden under the sink, but encountering him upends everything. Once she has Mickey in her life, the great dormant volcano that's Ginny is cracked open again. Mickey represents a world that she had dreamed of in her wildest dreams. He’s a real thing, she didn’t invent him; they're making love; he's whispering sweet nothings to her; they're meeting under the boardwalk in the rain; and he's reciting great prose to her. She actually begins to believe that maybe she can have another life, one that Mickey seems to promise her. She does have moments of very real hope. Everything changes after Ginny unwittingly introduces Mickey to Carolina and he instantly taken by her. Mickey believes in love at first sight, and he falls really hard for Carolina. In the short time they spend together, as she peels layers back for him, the more he hears about her life, the more he becomes fascinated with the chances that she took at such a young age because she feels like she's in love with somebody. There’s a passion inside Mickey and Carolina has got that too. He’s an artist and he represents a new kind of glamour for her, which is coming from books and plays and conversations about far-off places. Her receiving a book from him tickles something in her that's a new excitement, and she likes being wooed by him. He's a very good wooer; he did it with Ginny and now he’s doing it with Carolina. Ginny’s awareness of Mickey’s growing infatuation with Carolina provokes an intense reaction within her. She hasn’t experienced great jealousy before and it takes her by surprise. She’s really consumed by both the feeling of jealousy itself as well as the awareness that it’s setting her off kilter. Then the jealousy does set in big time, and it makes her crazy. There are no other words for it, it makes her crazy. Woody Allen has always had a special fondness for 'Coney Island', and memorably set the childhood home of 'Annie Hall's Alvy Singer' under the clattering Cyclone roller coaster. Allen has many happy memories of going there often as a child. There were so many colorful people there, and so many conflicting and complex activities going on, and it was such a vital atmosphere. Like so many of Allen’s films, "Wonder Wheel" is a story that involves love and betrayal. Whether you’re reading Greek drama, Stendhal, Tolstoy, or Dickens, the love relationships are ever-present, because they cause so many people so much anguish, so much conflict. They lead to so many complex, deep, intense, confusing and dramatic feelings and situations. Over the centuries, the guys tend to be less readily demonstrative about their suffering. The male code is to not show suffering. Like when a batter gets hit by a pitcher, the idea is not to show any pain. There's a physiology of color, where a very warm color raises the metabolism or blood pressure on the bodies and a very cold color lowers it. So the two colors become like two characters, and Mickey is in the middle, and he reflects the tonality of whichever one he's near. These color treatments were not utilized in a solely abstract way, but always had to realistically reflect the places and times the characters are in. Ginny is often seen at ‘sunset time', when the warm tonalities of red/orange of the sun represent symbolically her attachment to the past. As Carolina is linked to the future, she lives mainly in the blue of the ‘magic hour', the time between the sun setting and the moon rising. The most dramatic example is within the family apartment, which is so close to the 'Wonder Wheel' that the attraction’s lights cast deeply saturated reds and blues over the characters. The film creates a theatrical drama. They're living amidst all this turbulence right outside their window, including gunfire from downstairs and lights changing the color of their apartment all the time. There's poetic and theatrical flare, but to retain the realism so you get involved with the characters and care about the story. But colors change in the middle of scenes to emphasize the theatrical tragedy that underlies the story. While the film is called "Wonder Wheel" because of 'The Coney Island Amusement Park' ride always visible from the family home, the title also has a metaphoric resonance. The same behaviors keep going around and around for these characters. As much as Humpty wants to change, as much as Ginny wants to change, they keep going through their same patterns. It’s a vicious cycle of their lives and their co-dependencies, and they can’t break out. It’s probably true that you can extrapolate some kind of symbol for life from any amusement park ride. Either you’re on the 'Wonder Wheel' going inexorably round and round as life turns meaninglessly, or you’re riding a carousel trying to catch that brass ring that you’ll never really get, or you’re on the rollercoaster. You get the idea. The view is beautiful from the 'Wonder Wheel', but you’re going no place. It has an element of romance to it, an element of beauty to it, but ultimately, an element of futility.

Greta Gerwig's debut solo film "Lady Bird" shines with fabulous performances from the entire cast, most notably Saoirse Ronan who plays Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson a teenager trying to figure out where she stands who is constantly feuding with her mum (Laurie Metcalf). Christine, a rebelous and ambitious teenager who's charm throughout the film compells the spectator feel a wide range of emotions - from joy to cringe, her character's warmth is utterly charming. Most directors don't have their debut films be so beloved and as close to perfection as this. Gerwig has shown her utterly skilled talent in writing and bringing that superb screenplay to life in a coming of age story unlike any other. Essentially we focus upon the mother-daughter relationship, surrounding them are characters like Julie, who's incredibly charming and smart played by Beanie Feldstein, Kyle, the cool guy around school played by Timothée Chalamet and Danny, who's revealed to be homosexual after being in a first love relationship with Lady Bird played by Lucas Hedges. Throughout the film Ronan's performance is so real and compelling that we as the spectator are sucked into the reality of the film and at no point do you question that and that is why she scored herself a best actress nomination for the Academy Awards. The cinematography is very well done, with the colours shining through showing the dark and light sides of life in Sacramento. The film is about how hard it is for teenagers to grasp the struggles of adult life and it has been captured with charm and emotion, this film will go down in my list as to one of my favourite films of recent years. 5/5 Ben Rolph

From 1996 until 2004, John Maclean was a vital member of Scottish indie/folk band The Beta Band. Releasing three studio albums in this time, the group were hailed by touring companions Radiohead and Oasis for their folk and electronic sound. Just over ten years later, Maclean has blessed us with his directorial feature debut Slow West. First opened to audiences at the Sundance Film Festival, the film was categorised as Dramatic and awarded the Sundance Institute’s World Cinema Jury Prize. This western drama finds Jay Cavendish (Jodi Smit-McPhee), a young Scottish teenager at the tender age of sixteen, alone in the heart of America. He soon finds himself under threat and bewildered by an ambush, but finds a saviour and riding partner in the mysterious Silas (Michael Fassbender) who offers to protect and take him wherever for a small fee. In search of Rose (Caren Pistorius), the love of his life who fled Scotland, Jay embarks on an adventure through the Wild West. Offering so much more than a lot of other Western genre pieces, Slow West combines a love story with a revenge thriller and a coming of age tale. Maclean went into the process of making this film with clear influences; from the very first piece of dialogue to Silas chewing on an unrelenting amount of cigars, Sergio Leone’s the Man with No Name Trilogy seems to have held a lasting impact on Maclean. The tone of the film, however, takes a more modern approach, finding influence in the Coen Brothers to utilise comedic elements. Slow West knows exactly what it wants to be, forming a contemporary western from a first-time writer/director that lives up to its predecessors. When it comes to Slow West, Maclean manages to keep himself well grounded by remembering the people that helped him get to where he is now. It’s no surprise that the star of his two previous short films, Michael Fassbender (Man on a Motorcycle and Pitch Black Heist), should appear in this feature. Fassbender puts on yet another breathtaking performance and manages to be deceptive to almost everyone in the film without a single care, all while carrying charm to his wit. His counterpart, McPhee, follows in Fassbender’s footsteps to bring a naive, but bright-eyed and loveable character to life that doesn’t quite understand all the carnage in the world but knows enough to understand that it’s what is needed as he utters the line, “Love is universal, like death”. Showing yet another dark period of history in America, Slow West is a triumph and proves that the Western genre still has plenty of life in it, and many more tales to be told. To already have a BAFTA for Pitch Black Heist, and now his debut feature film, the future of Maclean’s career looks bright, and his shine rubs off on his cast wonderfully in this tale of one young man’s quest for love.

Get out , a thriller with inplicit scenes of horror, directed by Jordon Peele, turned heads when first released in the United States, February 24th 2017. The cultural scares of the film created the realistic attitudes of society, past and present. The starring actor, Daniel Kaluuya, plays the boyfriend to a 'normal' girl ( Alison Williams ) with a , perhaps , strange family. Daniel ( known as Chris Washington in the film ) , already insecure about the colour of his skin, wonders how Rose's ( the girlfriend ) white family will react with him being black. As little suspitions arrise about the family in many different deranged circumstances, 'Chris' longs to leave the house but as a convolution reveals itself , he is no longer able to. "Get out" is a spine-chilling , sublime film with tension and curiosity throughout. Originality is explicit as the twist is expected ; by nobody. If you are looking for a 'nail-biting' film ... this is it! Rating : 9.7 / 10 ( 97% ) Jordon Peele wowed the film industry globally as he is one of few 'black' directors to reach over 250 million US dollars.

(Release Info London schedule; March 23rd, 2018, Cineworld, Leicester Square) "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House" Based on a true story of the most famous anonymous man in American history; Mark Felt (Liam Neeson), the FBI second-in-command who was the 'Deep Throat' whistleblower in the 1970s 'Watergate' scandal. The identity of the secret informant remained a source of intense public curiosity and speculation for over thirty years, until Felt revealed himself through an article in 'Vanity Fair' in 2005. While his name has been public for a decade, few know about the personal and professional life of the brilliant and uncompromising Felt, who risked and ultimately sacrificed everything, including his family, career, and ultimately his freedom, to bring what he knew to light. Mark Felt shows us 'Watergate' as we’ve never seen it before, flipping the perspective from 'All The President’s Men’s' journalists-on-the-street to a view from the highest offices of power, an extraordinary window into a government in turmoil. The story of far-reaching 'White House' corruption, of which 'The Watergate' break-in was only a lone example. As current events strike startling parallels to the political turmoil of 'The Watergate' era; including power struggles between the executive branch and the FBI, evidence of election dirty tricks, and renewed 'White House' challenges to the veracity of the media; Mark Felt’s story could not be more timely. As if what was happening between 'The FBI' and 'The Nixon White House' wasn't enough, Felt was also dealing with two extraordinarily personal tragedies at the same time. The first was with his wife, Audrey (Diane Lane). Audrey was beautiful, flirtatious, complicated, damaged, alcoholic, and probably bipolar, although they didn’t have that diagnosis in those days. She was like a firebird that he was in love with but couldn’t control. She was self-medicating, taking pills and drinking. But sometimes life can make you crazy if you don’t already have a proclivity for imbalance, and in her case she was justified to have these schisms in her personality, because she was asked to perform such rigorous compartmentalized duties, she had to maintain the secrets, she had to put on public airs, she had to be explaining to her children and compensate for the missing father, and she had to provide a nurturing home for him. She was, in hindsight, very neglected, and when she would drink she would clamor for attention, and she would voice her lack of attention, and that can be what you remember somebody by, because it’s the more dramatic moments. The frustration of that must have been incredibly tough on her as well as on Joan (Maika Monroe), their daughter. There’s no doubt that Audrey’s conflicts with their brilliant and beautiful daughter caused her to run away from home, and live a counter-culture life on a farm in California. The two of them were products of vastly different generations and simply did not understand each other. That's tricky to witness your daughter flowering into young adulthood at a time when she's offered a lot more options than the previous generation was offered, and you get to witness your daughter making choices that you don’t approve of, and you're not afforded the same opportunities. Anybody who knows this about themselves is going to try to hide it, but it’s still going to manifest itself in some way. Using Felt’s books 'The FBI Pyramid' and 'A G-Man’s Life' as foundational material, the film sets about researching the screenplay with the rigor and intensity he brought to his journalism. Mark Felt had a romantic idea of what a 'G-Man' was and he lived up to that. He believed in everything that Hoover stood for as regards security and defense of the country, and wanted to emulate him. At the same time, Felt was, by his own admission in his book, a careerist. Felt is what was known in 'The FBI' in those days as a ‘torpedo,’ meaning he would quite ruthlessly go for the main chance to advance himself in Hoover’s eyes. And as a man who was trained in counter-intelligence during 'WWII', Felt was a man who with a fluid skill set for telling untruths if it was necessary to serve his work. While giving information to Woodward and Sandy Smith of 'Time Magazine', he was, not only aggressively denying doing so, he was leading aggressive 'FBI' investigations into finding the leaker. That’s the riddle of the man. He was absolutely inscrutable. He spoke with authority but you could never quite read behind his eyes, even when he denied being ‘Deep Throat’ on television numerous times after Nixon left office. Some stories simply call out to you. Nixon had resigned in 1973. Woodward and Bernstein, and the infamous source on Nixonian corruptions himself, had kept the name a secret for more than thirty years. When Mark Felt outed himself, you could feel anticlimax in the air, almost a disappointment. A life-long FBI man, the infantry of law enforcement. We've never even heard of him, but we knew one thing for sure; the seeming banality of the true identity of 'Deep Throat' was going to end up being precisely why Felt was one of the great stories of our time. Politics barely had a thing to do with it. It was principle, and it came at the steepest possible price, his career, all his friendships, his wife's life, and his future. He had self-immolated in the quiet dark and no one knew. Woodward knew how he did it, obviously, and the film wants to tell the world why. Lifer lawman discovers corruptions emanating from the highest office in the land, does all he can to investigate, is gagged by orders to implicitly join the cover-up, faces the moral crisis of a man built to defend truth and justice, ultimately chooses to sacrifice all he knows and stands for in the name of a higher calling. The film gives through 'The Looking Glass' of America's most important journalistic moment, the unveiling of the anonymous source, 'Deep Throat'. Felt had a lot more going on at the time than just 'Watergate'. There's a mythic romance of his situation. The mess of the 60's was over; the modernization of the 70's hadn't yet begun. The early 70's was an interstitial space. This is a movie about reaction and strategic silence.. After devoting his life to public service, Felt spent many of years after his 1973 retirement fighting the charges against him. He was convicted in November 1980, fined $5000, and given a full pardon in March 1981 by President Reagan. Still, all these years of shame were a source of great stress for Audrey, from which she never fully recovered. In July 1984, she took her own life with Felt’s service revolver. For three decades, the identity of “'Deep Throat', the anonymous source for 'Washington Post' reporters Woodward and Bernstein’s 'Watergate' coverage, was one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of American politics. Numerous possible candidates were put forward, but aside from Woodward and a few others, no one knew the answer until July, 2005, when it was revealed to be Mark Felt, a former #2 man at the FBI. While the world now had a name and a face, this knowledge only raised additional questions. Who was Mark Felt and what motivated him? Why did a man who sat at the top of an institution built on confidentiality, decide to reveal secrets? These were even bigger mysteries, whose solutions held the key to how this country emerged from the nightmare of 'Watergate'. The reason Felt did what he did remains unanswered, but we can certainly guess that he saw firsthand what was happening in 'The Nixon Administration'; which was corruption, law-breaking, lying, and deceiving at the highest level. He was very concerned for his country, and he felt duty-bound to expose that. When You've to be willing sometimes to make very difficult choices, including destroying the thing you love to save the thing you love. Still, there's little doubt that Felt was torn about what he did, as it went against his instincts and training as an 'FBI' man. He did something noble by exposing Nixon’s corruption and he was probably proud of that, but at the same time there's a code in 'The FBI' that you just never snitch. There was a part of him that was 'The Lone Ranger' but also a part of him that was the good soldier. The part that was the good soldier could never quite forgive himself for some of the leaking and he was nervous about how it might be perceived, as he cared very much about his image with his fellow agents. Perhaps this explains why Felt adamantly denied being 'Deep Throat' for over three decades. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligations. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us, thus, absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. Felt really believed that as regards these covert activities that he engaged in. He was breaking the law, but saw the country in very, very dire danger with these terrorist groups. 'Watergate' was the loss of innocence in our culture, of trusting our government. The time before that was a simpler time, and it’s nice to see what used to be considered shocking. Now we’ve seen what’s behind the curtain of ‘Oz,’ you can’t go back, unless you forget history. A corrupt government was found out, and that's democracy working. A lot of countries don’t have that and this film shines a light on America and the potential of what a real democracy can be. Although it seems like a long time ago, perhaps not much has changed since then. One of the things we take away from it's that it’s easy as a human being, particularly as an American, when you’re in a time of political crisis to believe that nothing like this has ever happened before. Throughout our time as Americans, since the beginning of the Constitution, there have been these crises that have really pushed the country and separated the country. It’s not terribly unusual for it to happen. People in power have very frail and fragile egos, and are driven by paranoia, in addition to whatever senses of civic obligation they feel. And history repeats itself, because people keep doing the same stupid things to protect themselves, or doing what they think will protect themselves. Let’s not pretend that this can’t happen again. It can happen again and we always have to be prepared for it. People say it will never happen again, but it’s human nature and it can.

Unexpectedly romantic and touching! This tale that happens during the summer of love in the year 1983 was a critical darling that managed to nab the Oscar for adapted screenplay. The story revolves around Elio, a cultivated teenager from a small town in Northern Italy who becomes trapped in the "mystery of love" when an american arrives to do some work with his father. Unlike last year's Moonlight who had a more expository role in describing three stages in the life of a young gay man, Call Me by Your Name takes its time with the lead, making us more familiar with the environment first. There's a constant warm feeling throughout, the summers are incredibly hot and Guadagnino has a beautiful way of showcasing it by using perfect photography on the trees, rivers, sweat and the overabundence of flies. Elio's passion for culture reflects into reading and playing the piano as he's waiting for the summer to pass. Timothee Chalamet deserves all the praise in the world for this strong and very hard to portray take on a coming of age story. In a brief scene, a character tells him the people who read are hiders and they don't like who they are and it perfectly fits as Elio searches for all the answers in the books until life decides to teach him a lesson. By the time they fall for each other, you're completely invested in their bittersweet moments, and come the end you'll probably even shed a tear. There are some scenes of profound sensibility as when after they separate Elio calls his mom to pick him up and he bursts into tears. There's an amazing monologue from his father: "I may have come close but I never had what you two have" and a final gut punching scene where they say goodbye to each other possibly for ever on the phone, while Sufjan Stevens' Vision of Gideon starts playing. The camera stays on Chalamet's face as he's taking in all the sorrow and then finally is ready to let go. A remarkable piece of work from Guadagnino that has plenty of things to say about love, with a delicate, warm feeling. One of the best films of the year! Daniel Craciun

Annihilation Finally Netflix has brought out a high end original film to go alongside some of its excellent original tv series (Jessica Jones being my favourite). After the meh to boring such as Cloverfield Paradox and Bright, I hope Neflix has finally cracked the movie formula. To get Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac on board must have been massive coups. Hopefully they will see sense to splash the cash on guys like this in the future rather than giving Adam Sandler free reign to make endless low brow, low quality trash. So whoever (whomever??) did the cinematography for this film deserves a round of applause and all the credit they can get. Wait, let me check who it was.... ....it was Rob Hardy- who also worked on Ex Machina which also starred Oscar Isaac (Poe from new Star Wars series). Maybe he just knows how to light that guy's face ever so well. Anyway, the look of this film was up there with Bladerunner 2049. It was as though everything within the "the shimmer" was shot through a bubble- you know, when you get that bent rainbow of colours around the edges. I felt that this film was like a blending of Robin William's What Dreams May Come, Evolution (from 2001) and bizarrely also the new Blair Witch. Granted, not three films you may ever categorise together but if you've seen them too I'd like to think you'll see where I'm coming from with this. I think what stops this film being really great is that given the premise I think more could have been shown of the animal mutations in the shimmer world. We see a lot of the plants, but they seem only to give the scientists a chance to narrate to the audience what is happening. I say this mainly because the the screaming mutated bear creature was so well done creepy-wise and really gets under your skin, if they had explored that with what one or two more similar creatures could do I think we would have gotten more from it. Also the flashback subplot seemed a bit unnecessary. In summary, a very good watch if you have a Netflix subscription. A solid 3.5/5.

Ghost ries So I went along to the Odeon's Scream Unseen preview screening last night and correctly predicted it was to be 'Ghost Stories' (predictable as Odeon typically show a British film and there's few British horrors in the pipeline). This wasn't the disappointment though as I would have gone to see this anyway. The disappointment was for a British made film to rely so heavily on the Hollywood horror playbook of loud noise jump scares and creepy girls with long hair. As this film is based on Andy Nyman's (who stars and directs) stage play, maybe the scares are more effective in that medium and the overall tone more creepy, but it didn't come across as anything special. I found myself pretty much counting down to when a scare or false scare would occur. That said, there was a stellar cast involved with Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins, Dr Watson and Tim from the Office), Paul Whitehouse (The Fast Show) and especially up and comer Alex Lawther (The End of the F***ing World and he also appeared in a Black Mirror episode as a young man who is black mailed by webcam hackers into doing increasingly disturbing acts). I think this young actor stole the show. His small role got the best reactions from an "uninitiated" horror audience. His close up facial expressions oozed the fear his character was trying to hide but he also delivered perfect comic timing when appropriate. We got an unexpected turn for the last act (would be interesting to see how this is done in the play) but didn't give us anything that hasn't been done before (not naming similar film's due to avoiding giving it away). Not a bad film by any means, just highly forgettable I'm afraid.

Muse (Newcastle Film Festival) Really disappointed with this one. I believed I was going to see a Spanish film of the same name made in 2017, but instead I got this poor substitute. It honestly felt like a C-Movie which made back in the early 90s had been forgotten about and somebody unearthed it and submitted it for a film festival trying to make out it was retro. The film's lead (let's call him Discount Bradley Cooper) had the acting chops of one of the "actors" on Channel 5's after 11pm softcore pornography movies. Some of the audience literally sniggered at his awkward attempts to convey emotion. Also the cutting of this film made no sense. I had no idea what was supposed to be going on at the start. It kept cutting to random people which I'm pretty sure never reappeared. Every time the 'Muse' appeared, pseudo-Bradley reacted as though a naked lady appearing out of nowhere was an everyday occurrence for him (though this probably does happen to the real Bradley Cooper). The worst bit of this experience was at the end when a member of the cinema crew announced that the director was to hold a surprise Q&A afterwards. I made a mad dash out only to nearly knock this director over with the screen exit door. Sorry mate :(

(Release Info London schedule; April 3rd, 2018, BFI Southbank, 18:10) "Wonderstruck" Based on Brian Selznick’s critically acclaimed novel Ben (Oakes Fegley) and Rose (Millicent Simmonds) are children from two different eras who secretly wish their lives were different. Ben longs for the father he has never known, while Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his home and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out on quests to find what they're missing that unfold with mesmerizing symmetry. In 1927, young Rose runs away from home in New Jersey and makes her way to Manhattan, hoping to find someone who was an important part of her past. Fifty years later Ben, a deaf boy befallen by personal tragedy, finds a clue about his family that leads him to run away from rural Minnesota to New York. As their adventures lead them to strange new places, where mysteries about themselves and the world seem to lurk around every corner, their stories of discovery reach across years of silence and regret, and find each other through a mesmerizing symmetry driven by wonder and hope. For Rose, life under the strict control of her father is typical for a deaf child of her era, kept out of public view with little connection to the world outside of her beloved scrapbook, an elaborate, living work of art dedicated mostly to the career of an actress, Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore). When Mayhew comes to New York to open up a new play, Rose manages to find her way into Manhattan, hoping to connect to the silent movie star. For lifelong Ben, his deafness is recent, the result of a freak accident that occurred shortly after the loss of his mother, free-spirited Elaine (Michelle Williams). Sorting through her things, he finds a clue about his unknown father; a souvenir book from New York City. He boards a bus, unbeknownst to his bereft aunt, and eventually arrives in Manhattan. For both young people, their inability to hear and communicate makes their quest in the big city fraught with excitement and danger. Their simple goals quickly turn complex as the chaos and confusion of city streets derail them. Despite their maturity and determination, they're easily overwhelmed and reluctant to seek help. Both wind up seeking solace at 'The American Museum Of Natural History', where new and old friends join them in confronting the questions that Rose and Ben so desperately need answered. Anyone who read Brian Selznick’s novel 'The Invention Of Hugo Cabret' probably won’t be surprised to learn that Selznick’s follow-up, "Wonderstruck", documents a child’s sense of awe as they discover an adult world that's often marked by loneliness, confusion and regret. And like it's predecessor, "Wonderstruck" manages to infuse it's story with a childlike sense of magic and possibility, rendered both in word and image. Selznick’s novels are as much informed by his amazing illustrations as they're by the vividly imagined characters and marvelous historical settings that populate his work. You hear the words in your imagination, and then the narrative continues in the pictures but without words; it shifts into a different part of your brain. The book works at the deepest level, evoking the imagination and allowing spaces to fill in the gaps yourself, and you take possession of it and it’s your own. The fact that it created a dialogue between these two periods of time, but having the continuity of New York fifty years changed, from the 1920s story to the 1970s story, just begged to be turned into the language of cinema. Maybe if you make a book, where there are pictures that tell the story of a deaf character, it would parallel in some fashion the way that she experiences her life, because they would both be visual. The result is a book that's unlike any other reading experience. Immediately after it's publication in 2011, 'Wonderstruck' became must-reading for people of all ages. The initial impulse to tell the story of a remarkable journey from the perspective of one deaf child grew into two stories and two journeys, told alternatively throughout the book. One story is shown entirely in Selznick’s exquisitely detailed and delicate illustrations, in the tradition of the graphic novel, but without any text or words, the life as seen through young Rose in 1927. Born deaf, Rose lives with a father who hides her away, and she escapes into New York City hoping to make a connection with a famous actress, Lillian Mayhew. The sights of the great urban landscape at the height of the jazz age are experienced by the reader as if through Rose’s eyes, the silence of her life all the more powerfully rendered. Rose’s family, they don’t really understand how deaf people live in the world, and they’re afraid of her. Though she recognizes that Rose’s father, a physician ashamed of his daughter’s condition, means well by trying to keep his daughter safe and essentially locked up. Rose’s absent mother factors into Rose’s psyche in a complicate manner. At the beginning of the story, Rose seems to suspect that famous actress Lillian Mayhew is her real mother, and that possibility suggests more than just abandonment. She’s a young mother, almost a little too young, and maybe she didn’t want children. She wants to be free and independent, and as a woman back then, she didn’t have a lot of rights. Maybe she wants to be the one to show her daughter that women can do things and be independent, she concludes as to what Rose finds so fascinating about the mysterious Lillian. The population of deaf children, some of whom, like Rose, were never able to hear, and others like Ben who become deaf because of illness or accident; is very small. For members of the deaf community and their allies, that has not prevented recent generations of deaf artists from expressing themselves creatively through storytelling and the visual and performing arts. The second story takes place fifty years later, and also features a young hero, Ben, traveling to New York City, this time looking for clues about his long-lost father. Ben is only recently deaf, so his story is told in traditional prose, as he experiences many of the same challenges and obstacles that Rose faces, but with a different set of memories, intentions, and abilities. Ultimately, of course, the two stories intersect; the girl who was once Rose emerges as an older woman who might hold the key to Ben’s identity as well. But along the journey, the reader is drawn in and out of each story through Selznick’s deft and confident play between these two very different modes of reading. What the reader sees in Rose’s story defies language; what the reader hears in their head via the words in Ben’s story spark the visual imagination in a way that no words could properly describe. Wonderstruck is designed to be two stories, one with pictures only, one with words only. They’re both in search of family. They’re both in search of community, in search of a history. The.way these stories intersected in unexpected and beautiful ways means there's an evocation of childhood in both stories that also felt very authentic. There's the challenge of recreating 1970s New York. That personal connection is important, as some audiences might have forgotten about New York City’s bleaker years. That was the time of that famous 'Daily News' headline; ‘Ford To City: Drop Dead', about New York’s national reputation as decaying and crime-ridden. Indeed, viewers of “Wonderstruck” who are more familiar with the New York of Woody Allen or 'Sex And The City' might be thrown by “Wonderstruck”’s spot-on depiction of a once-glorious metropolis struggling to survive. 1927 was a period of ascendancy and hope, and the city was still being built. It was New York on the rise. The year that Rose ventures forth from her home into the city, is the year that is often remembered as the turning point in film history, when Warner Brothers’ “The Jazz Singer” ushered in the era of sound moviemaking after it's debut in October of that year. In fact, most film historians note that the transition to sound film dates back much earlier and the full impact of talkies was not realized until a couple of years later, but for a symbolic point in time, 1927 will do. This key event in 1927 is often pointed out as a triumph in technology, something that moves everything forward. From the perspective of deaf culture and deaf history, it was a tragedy for the deaf community, because it separated them from the audiences who were enjoying the movies. Before that, you.could go as a deaf person, and the action is mostly happening visually on screen. Indeed, though the character of Lillian Mayhew is not deaf, she finds herself in an equally troubling transition from visibility to perhaps irrelevance. As a young girl, Rose can’t quite appreciate it, but Lillian’s stock as a film star is clearly falling with the coming of sound, and her return to the stage is more of a desperate act to keep her fame alive than an ambitious career move. But 1977 was the nadir and falling apart, and that’s just factually true, and something that really conveyed in the novel that's a key element of the film. However, the crossover of deaf characters into mainstream culture has been largely restricted in recent times to adult characters, from dramatic fare like 'Children Of A Lesser God' to 'Marvel Comic Avenger'. The result is that there isn’t much precedent in cinema for telling a story, two stories, in fact, from the perspective of a child who cannot hear. Because both protagonists in the film set out on their own, there's no guardian or protector, no translator, and neither of them know how to use sign language. “Wonderstruck” cannot rely on secondary characters, subtitles, or other familiar narrative devices that might be used as a point of access for a film viewer. Selznick had consulted with a variety of friends and colleagues involved in deaf culture and education as he was writing the novel, wanting to make it as authentic to the deaf character's experience while still not making the story exclusively about the character's disability. But books, at least the traditional kind on paper, don’t have an audio component. Even so-called silent films were never silent, so the film addresses the complex problem of what deaf feels like while still employing some sort of sound track. What’s so exhilarating about "Wonderstruck" is that it's always designed as a half-silent film. The black-and-white story would be told as a silent film, and silent film plays a role in the story itself, Rose’s mother is a silent screen star. Meanwhile, Ben, who’s newly deaf, spends a good hour of the film on a silent voyage not conversing with anyone, just observing. So, the two stories interact without sound in very different ways. It allows for a very rich and nuanced role that the sound design plays between music and ambient sound,.between subjective and objective interplay of sound that Ben is sensing, since he just lost his hearing. There’s the suggestion that there’s the phantom sound that haunts him, the memory of sound. It’s not a stretch to say that the film experts at period recreation, but the ability to capture a specific time and place is often more than just a matter of getting the details right. For example, the lush suburban 1950s setting of "Far from Heaven" is as much a tribute to the films of Douglas Sirk and other directors of the era as it's about precision and accuracy, while the dazzling 1970s of “Velvet Goldmine” owes more than a debt to the stylized glam rock lifestyle of it's characters as much as it does to the real time and place. That ability is demonstrated again, twofold, in “Wonderstruck,” as the story takes place fifty years apart and almost entirely in New York City, with much of the action occurring at the iconic 'American Museum Of Natural History'. In many ways, the story functions as a.mystery, in turn answering and then uncovering more questions about what's driving each.child’s journey and why they're being paralleled. In the end, we learn the value of following your own instincts and curiosity and overcoming your fears through various kinds of creative practices. It's a transformational power that we've in our own hands. It’s very much about what you can learn and experience through your own eyes and what you can accomplish with your own hands. Not just overcoming loss and the unknown, but how to reach out and communicate with one another.