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(Release Info London schedule; December 10th, 2018, Regent Street Cinema, 20:10) "Burning" "Burning" is the searing examination of an alienated young man, Jongsu (Ah-in YOO), a frustrated introvert whose already difficult life is complicated by the appearance of two people into his orbit; first, Haemi (Jong-seo JUN), a spirited woman who offers romantic possibility, and then, Ben (Steven Yeun), a wealthy and sophisticated young man she returns from a trip with. When Jongsu learns of Ben’s mysterious hobby and Haemi suddenly disappears, his confusion and obsessions begin to mount, culminating in a stunning finale. Jongsu is a complex character. He's a man looking into a plastic greenhouse. A greenhouse, rather than a barn, came to our minds, because it's more commonly found in Korea. A greenhouse that's transparent but stained. And a man staring into an empty space of nothingness from the other side of the plastic veneer. He installes an unforgettable presence in the mind of the audience. Ben is a character possessing a mysterious charm and emotional depth. He has unique intuition and the ability to see the world in a unified sense. Haemi is Jongsu’s childhood friend who catches his heart with her free spirit. She discovers Jongsu through an audition process. She possesses both the boldness which attracts Jongsu and Ben and the innocence of a young girl. Metaphor is a concept or meaning, the worn-out greenhouse in the film is an image which goes beyond concept or meaning. It has a physical form, but it's transparent and has nothing inside. It's once made for a purpose only to be rendered useless now. It's purely cinematic in the sense that it cannot be fully explained with a concept or an idea. There are other things that transcend ideas and notions as plastic greenhouse in the film; pantomime, the cat, and Ben, too. Unlike texts, films convey visual imagery, which itself is a mere illusion projected onto a screen by beams of light. Nonetheless, the audience take in the empty illusions, giving them a meaning and a concept of their own. This film shows such mystique that underlies cinema as a medium. The mystery that underlies the film medium reflects the mystery of our own lives. People continue to question the meaning of the world that seems to be meaningless, but the world always stays as a mystery. Despite that, some people do not give up seeking for the meaning of life. Like the way Haemi does the dance of 'The Great Hunger' in the film. All animals and objects in this universe are 'Great Hunger'. The stars in the night sky tremble because they're doing 'Fhe Dance Of The Great Hunger'. The early morning dew on leaves are the tears shed by the stars. 'The Forefathers Of Bumankind , 'The Bushmen Of The Kalahari Desert', danced all night in search of the meaning of life. Just because someone dances all night, the world would not change. But the fact that someone dances in spite of it conveys hope. Perhaps, filmmaking is not so different from doing the dance of 'The Great Hunger'. "Burning" is based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, inspired by William Faulkner’s 1939 story 'Barn Burning'. William Faulkner's short story is about rage. Although this film is based on 'Murakami's' story, its also connected to the world of Faulkner. Faulkner's story is about a man and his rage against life and the world, and it also vividly depicts the sense of guilt that his son feels for his father’s arson. Unlike Faulkner's story, 'Murakami's' story is a story about a man who goes around burning barns for fun, an enigmatic story. As such, the way they tell their stories are quite opposite. 'Murakami's' barn is a metaphor rather than a tangible object whereas Faulkner's barn represents reality itself. "Burning" is a one-of-a-kind Korean film noir. It's an exploration of genre conventions and the real world. The film experiments with the concept of going back in time, and searches for the meaning of true love. The audience takes a peek at the everyday lives of Jongsu, Ben, and Haemi. It's a story about anger, especially the anger that young people feel these days. It seems that today, people all over the world, regardless of their nationalities, religions, or social status, are angry for different reasons. The rage of young people is a particularly pressing problem. Young people in Korea are also having a hard time. They suffer from unemployment. They find no hope in the present and see that things will not get better in the future. Unable to identify the target at which they can direct their rage, they feel helpless. Yet the world looks as if it's becoming more sophisticated and convenient, a perfectly functioning place on the surface. To many young people, the world is becoming more like a giant puzzle. It’s somewhat like how the protagonist in 'Murakami's' story feels listless before a man whose true identity is shrouded in mystery. People who've experienced feeling average or small could understand that feeling of helplessness. We do not come up with a good story, but rather come across it. We're going around in circles, looking for an uncharted road. Like living organisms, good stories wander around us, and if we've a discerning eye, we will finally recognize them. The story feels mysterious, but nothing really happens in it. There's something very cinematic about that mysteriousness. The gaping holes in the chain of events, the missing piece from which we can never know the truth, alludes to the mysterious world we live in now; the world in which we sense that something is wrong but cannot quite put a finger on what the problem is. The film pays attention to the realities of the various strata and to sketch the stories of young people living in modern society. Increases the level of immersion through a beautiful visual style. While giving Korean social problems like class inequality, economic stagnation and bruised masculinity a stark universal relevance, the film also probes the deeper existential hunger found in modern life. The story elegantly crafts film veils intellectual weight and sly social commentary beneath a playful noir sensibility. Pairing austerely beautiful visuals with a measured pace, "Burning" is one of the year's enigmatic best.

(Release Info London schedule; December 11th, 2018, Picturehouse Central, 18:00) "Free Solo" From filmmaker and mountaineer Jimmy Chin comes "Free Solo", a stunning, intimate and unflinching portrait of free soloist climber Alex Honnold, as he prepares to achieve his lifelong dream, climbing the face of the world’s most famous rock, the 3,200-foot 'El Capitan' in 'Yosemite National Park'; without a rope. Celebrated as one of the greatest athletic feats of any kind, Honnold’s climb set the ultimate standard, perfection or death. Succeeding in this challenge places his story in the annals of human achievement. "Free Solo" is an edge-of-your seat thriller and an inspiring portrait of an athlete who challenges both his body and his beliefs on a quest to triumph over the impossible, revealing the personal toll of excellence. As the climber begins his training, the armor of invincibility he’s built up over decades unexpectedly breaks apart when Honnold begins to fall in love, threatening his focus and giving way to injury and setbacks. The film succeeds in beautifully capturing deeply human moments with Honnold as well as the death-defying climb with exquisite artistry and masterful, vertigo-inducing camerawork. The result is a triumph of the human spirit that represents a miraculous opportunity for the rest of us to experience the human sublime. Free soloing takes extraordinary commitment because you’re climbing without a safety system to catch you. Simply put, if you don’t perform perfectly, you die. It's the purest form of climbing, and the most dangerous. It's just you and the rock with no margin for error. Alex Honnold prepares meticulously for his solos and has a specific talent; he can control his fear absolutely. The greatest athletes are judged by how well they perform under pressure. To be able to maintain total composure and execute perfectly for hours at a time when the stakes are life and death the entire time; that’s extraordinary. The choices you've to make to be a free soloist point to some very hard decisions, in a way, to the essence of some of the hardest decisions that a person has to make in life; ambition versus family/relationships, risk versus reward. It’s difficult to imagine that someone could feel they're 100 percent ready to free solo 'El Cap'. The technical difficulties are such that even if you’re a professional climber, with a rope, on one of your best days, you could fall. Beyond requiring superhuman power and endurance, the climbing on 'Freerider' is very insecure and complex; it requires an enormous amount finesse and nuanced body positions. There are sections where it’s purely friction. Your feet are standing on nothing and there are no handholds to catch yourself. You've to be perfect. This film is interested in the emotional questions around climbing. It important that the film explore not only Alex’s internal dialogues, but also his personal relationships, those with family and friends, and the nascent relationship between Alex and his girlfriend, Sanni McCandless. The film looks at how Sanni lives with the risks Alex takes and how Alex deals with balancing his climbing aspirations with his personal life. The candid scenes between Alex and Sanni are incredibly. Alex is not a maverick, he’s incredibly methodical. It's the process that allowed his free solo to succeed. Alex’s story has a strong aspirational quality that affected deeply. Those are the larger themes the film wants to explore. In it's essence "Free Solo" calls deliberate attention to the choices that we make; what’s a meaningful life and why?

(Release Info London schedule; February 1st; 2019, Picturehouse Central, 03:40 PM) "Capharnaüm" International Courtroom. Zain (Zain Al Rafefa), a 12-year-old boy, faces "The Judge" (Elias Khoury). Why are you suing your own parents? For giving me life. "Capharnaüm" recounts the journey of 12-year-old Zain, who decides to sue his parents for having brought him into this world when they can’t raise him properly, even if only to give him love. The fight of this mistreated boy, whose parents have not lived up to their task, resonates like the scream of all those who are neglected by the system. Zain’s real life is similar in several respects to that of his character. Beyond Zain’s accusaton, the motor of the story recounts the initatory journey of a boy without papers. Zain has no documents and so, in the legal sense, he doesn’t exist. His case is symptomatc of a problem raised throughout the film, the legitmacy of a human being. So many similar cases of children born undocumented because their parents couldn’t aford to register their births, who ended up invisible to the eyes of the law and society. Since they're undocumented, many end up dead, ofen from neglect, malnourishment or simply because they've no access to hospital treatment. They die without anyone notcing, since they don’t exist. They're not happy to have been born. The film addresses the queston of migrants. The topic is broached through the character of Mayssoun (Farah Hasno). It's important to talk about this through the children who fantasize about these voyages about which they know nothing, these children who are thrown into adulthood, into hard and brutal lives, against their will. A universal accusaton seen through candid eyes. The heroine of this film is a woman of colour. In Lebanon, so many girls like Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), a person without papers, leave their families, their own children, to work for other families where they become invisible women, forced to cut themselves of from any emoton, from the right to love. Rahil is arrested in 'The Cybercafé', she was arrested for real, for not having any papers. It's hard to believe. When she starts crying as she's being thrown into prison in the film, her tears are real, as she had lived through that very experience. They’re ofen the victms of racism or ill-treatment by employers who don’t view them as they do their other employees, for the simple reason that they're women of colour. They're not allowed to love or have children. Here again, the scene at the lawyer’s, where Harout (Joseph Jimbazian) has to pretend to separate from Rahil in favour of a Filipino (Abou Assad) employee who will bring more prestge to the family embodies the incongruity of a system that not only considers these women as property but also categorizes them. The desire is therefore to celebrate these women as they deserve to be celebrated. All these moments, where fiction and reality conjoined, without doubt contributed to the film's truth. Zain’s mother Suad (Kawthar Al Haddad) is inspired by a woman who had 16 children, living in the same conditons as in the film. Six of her children had died; others were in orphanages because she couldn’t care of them. Kawthar did in reality feed her children sugar and ice cubes. His father Selim (Fadi Yousef) is arrested for political treasure. Nonetheless, the noton of a child suing his parents seems unrealistc. The fact that Zain sues his parents represents a symbolic gesture in the name of all the children who, having not chosen to be born, should be able to demand from their parents a minimum of rights, at least the right to be loved. The trial is credible, through the interventon of television cameras and diferent media who help Zain to go to court. It’s in the courtroom that all the characters of the film meet. The idea of the court is necessary to give authentcity to the defence of a whole community of people. This hearing allows their voices, oppressed and ignored, finally to be heard. For that mater, when Zain’s mother defends herself to the judge. She expressed herself as Souad, allowing her to voice what has been forbidden her throughout her life. The tribunal is also there to confront us with our failure, our incapacity to act in the face of the poverty and desttuton into which the world is falling. The title imposes itself without really being aware of it. That’s what this film will be, a 'Capharnaüm'. The film centers on the theme of childhood. It's about the idea of building the film around the question of mistreated childhood. A child’s face yelling into adult faces as if blaming them for bringing him into a world that deprived him of all his rights. Childhood is the phase that shapes the rest of our lives. This also a way to force us to judge. On the contrary. The court exists to force us to see and hear diferent points of view, diferent opinions. We blame the parents, then we forgive them. This comes from my own experience. When faced with mothers who neglected the rights of their childhood. The hell they lived through, the clumsiness and ignorance that ofen led them to commit great injustces towards the fesh of their fesh, it's a slap in the face. The idea is that you say to yourself, 'how could I allow myself to hate or judge these people about whose experience, whose everyday reality? It's a disturbing and raw reality. We've to believe in the power of cinema. Films can, if not change things, at least help to open up a debate, or make people think. "Capharnaüm" laments the fate of this child. "Capharnaüm is a fiction. Nothing is fantasy or imagined; on the contrary, all you see is the result of visits to impoverished areas, detenton centres and juvenile prisons. It's crucial that the actors know the conditons the film shows, to give them a legitmacy when speaking of their cause. It's impossible for actors to portray people with such heavy baggage, who are living in a hell. The film allows the actors an outlet, a space where they're allowed to cry out their sufering and be listened to. "Capharnaüm" practcally becomes a family epic. It’s a barely-tamed film, one that emerged from our guts, and in which our DNA is deeply embedded. It's an organisatonal nightmare on every level. Just that's a victory. The story however, is the story of all those who've no access to elementary rights, educaton, health, and love too. This dark world in which the characters move, is symptomatc of an era, and the fate of every big city in the world. Zain succeeds in obtaining his documents by the end of the film, Rahil restablishes contact with her son. For the two of them, in real life as well, the film managed to legalise their situaton in Lebanon. The film questions the pre-established system and it's contradictions , even to imagine alternative systems. The themes are illegal immigrants, mistreated children, immigrant workers, the noton of borders and their absurdity, the fact that we need a piece of paper to prove our existence, which could be invalid if necessary, racism, fear of the other, indiference to 'The Conventon Of Children’s Rights'. "Capharnaüm" wants to establish a bill that would set up the basis of a genuine structure to protect ill-treated and neglected children. To give back to these children, who are nothing but God’s will or the fruit of a satsfed sexual urge, some kind of. The trigger is to shine a raw spotlight on the hidden face of Beirut and most large cites, to infltrate the everyday lives of those for whom desttuton is like a fate they can’t escape. "Capharnaüm" pushes realism to it's limits while exploring a social and human problem. The idea is to accentuate 'The Mad Max' side of things, almost mythological despite all that reality, that characterises the landscape of the film, and that is an allegory of the future of all large cites. The film strips back the scenes and establish a disturbing atmosphere for the audience, which is in some way brought face to face with it's culpability for having been here and done nothing. The aim of the film is to shake up and to move the audience.

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(Release Info London schedule; January 24th, 2019, Curzon Soho, 8:30pm) "Can You Ever Forgive Me" Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy), the best-selling celebrity biographer and cat lover, makes her living in the 1970’s and 80’s profiling the likes of Katherine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estee Lauder and Dorothy Kilgallen. When Lee finds herself unable to get published because she has fallen out of step with the marketplace, she turns her art form to deception, abetted by her loyal friend Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant).   Lee Israel is such a difficult character, not always likable, and the honesty and courage she has brought to it's something special. She's a certain kind of woman who isn’t going to suffer fools, and that’s exactly what Lee is. Her approach is very exciting to us. You see dimensions in her that you don’t often see in female characters. She’s not all shined up and floating through life making everything wonderful. She kind of storms in and leaves a path of destruction. There's no temptation to soften Israel’s razor-sharp corners. It's somewhat of a pose where she actes as if she didn’t care at all about the outside world. There’s something about how she kind of barrels through her life, even if it’s a bit of a front. She has a way of guiding you ever so gently so that a whole scene takes on a different feel to it. Words and language are everything to her. So, she's proud of being able to imitate these great writers, proving she could be every bit as witty and singular as they're. It's fun for her to play at that and it's some of her best work. Lee really didn’t care so much if people like her, but if people like her work, that's meaningful. With Lee’s cat, you see that even this grumbly, stubborn, difficult person really does love something. It’s also that love which starts the whole ball rolling when she needs money for the vet. Lee didn’t just wake up one day and say, ‘oh I think I’ll use my talents to commit crimes. To her, at first it's a matter of life and death.  It's also a story of two lost souls coming together, a rather unlikely friendship of a flamboyant rebel and a surly loner that's transformative in subtle yet emotionally profound ways. That friendship begins when Israel runs into Jack Hock, a large-hearted petty criminal who, sharing Israel’s insubordinate disposition, became her accomplice for a period of time. They're an odd couple because Jack is not literary at all. Yet they get along because both have a defiant, slightly criminal sensibility to them where they giggle at the many ways in which they can say ‘F you’ to society. It’s that attitude that makes you want to root for them. They’re both such misfits, they never really judge one another. Jack never takes offense at Lee’s crankiness. It just doesn’t ruffle his feathers. And Lee has spent so many years not letting anybody in, yet something about Jack’s personality works for her. Jack treats Lee in a very courtly way, with a respect and courtesy that's unusual in her experience. He’s also completely comfortable in his skin, happy to be flamboyant, while she’s so introverted and reticent, which can be a combination that works. Of course, he oversteps the mark with her, but that's also what she likes about him most. He doesn’t have any boundaries or believe in any rules and he’s willing to live outside of acceptable society and take her into what becomes a kind of Boho, borderless country of their own. Hock is a free spirit. He may be non-judgmental but he’s also completely unreliable. He’s an absolute flake, always on the make, and very little in his life works out. But there's also enormous pathos and poignancy in how things end up for him and his story is quite moving. We all know people like that. They can be very attractive and magnetic, yet also always scamming for something, always with a plan to do something fantastic, yet it never quite happens for them. Jack has a wilder side to him and is more experimental with his clothing. He has capes and colors and he’s kind of a peacock. He wants people to like him, to be attracted to him, and he works very hard at it, even if he doesn’t fully have the resources for it. There's a mix of sweetness, sadness and sense of humor to see in his look. Even though it’s the 90s, Jack wears clothes from the early 80s, very much influenced by 'The New Romantic' look of 'Duran Duran' and all those bands at that time. Jack seems to have the personality of a 'Labrador Retriever'. He just assumes that he might go up to anybody and they'll like him, but he's also sometimes kicked-about and he’s lonely. He's a coke dealer and probably kleptomaniac, banned from 'Duane Reade Drugstore' for shoplifting. But when he falls in with Lee Israel, they develop this very unusual love-hate relationship, which seemed to be the core of the story. Despite Lee’s curmudgeonly ways, they actually get on together, partly because he just insists on it. That both characters are gay is also unusual. This is an interesting time for two gay characters to come together in New York. Historically the lesbian community and the gay community in the city are pretty separate, but when 'AIDS' happened they kind of connected. A lot of gay women ended up becoming caretakers for a lot of gay men and the communities came together in a new kind of way. Lee is someone who often drank at a male gay bar and gay culture is part of their story in a lot of ways. As Lee Israel’s letter-forging career took off, she's suddenly given a chance at love and acceptance that she hadn’t had in years, if ever, albeit a chance she couldn’t take without exposing her ruse. Chief among those in the film is her link with a vintage bookstore owner who buys her first letters. Anna (Dolly Wells), who recognizes and admires Israel in a way that bolsters her flagging confidence. Sparks between them are visible, but Lee’s known deception of Anna stifles them. It's the most heartbreaking relationship in the story because this woman truly adores Lee and adores her most for her writing. She sees Lee in the way Lee has always wanted to be seen, but meanwhile Lee is in the middle of conning her. Anna is someone who has always lived vicariously through books. Anna inherited her father’s bookshop. She adores her father, so she runs it exactly as she believes he would want it to be. She hasn't the courage to step out and change any of it; she’s just very loyally continuing what he started. She’s very bright and very sweet, but very unconfident and she has never had any lasting relationships. Her whole life has been spent in the world of her books. That’s why Anna is so impressed by Israel when she walks right off the book jacket and into the store to sell her seemingly quaint and charming celebrity letters. She admires Lee, she’s also attracted to her and Anna would love to just talk endlessly about Lee’s work and writing and literature, so she’s all the things Lee could ever want. But, because their relationship starts off based on a lie, any attention Lee gets from Anna just fills her with more secret self-loathing. They share not only a passion for the written word, but a belief that women writers have something significant to offer. They've similar feelings on how literature is becoming all about these big, outspoken, well-paid men and it’s all about celebrity and money rather than talent and insight. There’s a real sweetness to that part of their connection. Anna can make Lee’s life so much more comforting. But even if they've meet under other circumstances, Lee finds some other reason to not allow herself to be loved. If Lee just liked herself just a tiny bit more, they might have had something beautiful. Lee Israel never envisioned a life of poverty and crime. In the heady days of 1970s Manhattan, she was a celebrated biographer with big aspirations. Her two best-selling books, well-received biographies of star Tallulah Bankhead and showbiz reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, won her entry into New York’s swanky literary scene. But when her third book, a biography of Estee Lauder, tanked, a writer’s block set in, and in the blink of an eye, Israel’s life flipped upside down. In a new era of mega-bestsellers and brand-name authors, Israel was persona non-grata. Her agent wouldn’t take her calls, the fancy party invites dried up, and she couldn’t get a job. Soon enough, she found herself living in squalor, surrounded only by musty books from a bygone era and her beloved cat 'Jersey'. As she skidded to rock bottom, Israel couldn’t comprehend how a writer of her talents could have fallen so far, but then things got worse. Unable to pay for an emergency visit to the vet for her cat, Israel knew something had to give. She sold everything she owned of value including a signed original letter from Kate Hepburn. The $200 she received for the sale of that letter, planted a see in Lee’s mind. Fate intervened while she was researching comic film and stage pioneer Fanny Brice for a new biography. After discovering and then stealing two letters written by Brice from 'The Public Library', which she then sold to a collector, Israel cooked up the sly idea. Creating more letters to maintain the cash flow. Thus, beginning her new career in sophisticated literary forgery. Israel began to create faux correspondence from such literary and entertainment greats as Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, Noel Coward, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, Louise Brooks and George S. Kaufman. She took her craft seriously, going to meticulous lengths to study her subjects, to match their writing styles to a T, even collecting vintage typewriters from all the right eras. Even to the trained eye, her forgeries were undetectable. At times, it was as if she was channeling the illustrious author's spirits, infusing her own life and soul with theirs. She convinced herself she was doing no harm, merely shining light on celebrity legends renowned for the wit and sophistication. She reveled in their cleverness, creating letters highlighting the sparkling, quotable adages, which had made them immortal in the first place. Meanwhile, life with a steady income grew more fun, filled with mischief, action and even admirers. But there was one major problem with it all; Israel was committing felonies left and right. It's about the tension between the fiercely intelligent, talented writer and her life of hoodwinking and crime. Lee is fascinating in her boldness and her abrasiveness, especially at that time since professional women were not encouraged to have any of those particular traits. She had a truth to her that was unrelenting. Ironically, when she finally wrote her story, including the surreal notion of being a bookish recluse playing catch-me-if-you-can with 'The FBI', she gained the literary attention for which she had so long hungered. Lee was feisty, witty, acerbic and tough. When she lost her dignity and had to eke out a living, she fought back. We all have those moments in life when we feel rejected or that our efforts are fruitless. We all can identify with someone who was on a downward cycle, who looked like she was absolutely defeated, but instead carved out her own way to have a taste of success. Whether or not you agree with what she did, because there’s no doubt what she did was criminal, she used her brains and her gifts to achieve something when all looked lost. She figured out a way to survive and to keep going, and most of all, she had some real fun while doing it. Lee upended any typical notion of an outlaw and con artist. Movies have all these complicated, wonderful male characters who can be very rough-edged and morally ambiguous and we don't ever question that. So to have a story featuring a woman who's complicated, who's a difficult person, who commits crimes, yet who's also feisty, smart, clever and ambitious, is exciting. Lee Israel is not your typical female protagonist, that she’s an anti-hero who breaks the long-standing mold of gritty male anti-heroes.   In the rogue’s gallery of great American forgers, one woman stands apart, Lee Israel, a dead-broke, once-acclaimed writer who in desperate times conjured something extraordinary out of her imagination and her tiny Manhattan flat, the phony but ingeniously believable words and witticisms of the legendary figures she admired. Suddenly able to make a living by selling counterfeit celebrity letters to collectors, Israel plunged into a life of crime, theft and deception. The story of Lee Israel’s rise and fall as a literary forger is one that might seemed far-fetched, but it all really happened. Israel herself recounted it in the self-deprecating, humor-spiked 2008 memoir of her misadventures, 'Can You Ever Forgive Me?'. She passed away from complications of myeloma in 2014. Beneath Israel’s felonious capers lies a more personal story, that of a lonely, cat-loving, hard-boozing outcast whose life grew more exciting with every person she tricked. Israel, inspired with a reverence for the literary rascals she was imitating, played the forgery game with a sense of style. By finding success in the marketplace with her flawless forgeries, Israel finally gained validation for her own eccentric passions, even if the most rapt attention she garnered was from 'The FBI'. "Can You Ever Forgive Me" is a window into a very specific New York, a dusty, musty, literary New York that the excesses of the 1980s never touched. It’s a world of libraries, bookshops, studio apartments and dive bars. The film creates a unifying palette and ambience for a New York of both high literature and gritty street life. A part of New York that has almost disappeared, both the New York of the bookstore culture but also that gritty 90s New York, when 'AIDS' was at it's terrifying height and the gay community was under so much pressure. The film explores the specific feeling of 'The Upper West Side' and 'Greenwich Village' in that era. The film captures a point in time just before bookstores started going away. It's a homage to these stores that used to be so much more frequent all over New York City and to use several of the real places where Lee sold her letters. A lot of Lee’s collected objects reflect styles of the 30s and 40s because of her interests in writers of that period. The film focuses on a classic American elegance for the stuff she would have bought during the time when she had money from her first big book success. But then layered over that's a time of having no money for upkeep. There are so many people in the world who just want to be recognized, to be seen for who they're and for their work to matter. They want to know their time on this planet meant something and they meant something to someone. This story is a reminder that people we pass every day, maybe without really seeing or acknowledging, have all these amazing things going on in their lives.  

(Release Info London schedule; January 19th, 2019, 191 Portobello, Notting Hill, 12:00 PM) "Destroyer" In Karyn Kusama’s new crime thriller "Destroyer", the receipt of an ink-marked bill in the office mail propels 'LAPD' detective Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman) on a perilous journey to find the murderer and gang leader, Silas (Toby Kebbell), and perhaps to finally make peace with her tortured past. The richly complex odyssey through the underbelly of Los Angeles and nearby desert communities reunites Bell with members of the criminal gang she once joined as an undercover 'FBI' agent; an assignment which ended disastrously and has taken a heavy emotional and physical toll on her life. One by one, she tracks down the gang leader’s former cohorts including Petra (Tatiana Maslany), Silas onetime lover and current errand girl. During her obsessive search, Bell is flooded with memories of her undercover days with Silas gang and her involvement in a bank heist gone tragically wrong. Especially painful are her recollections of Chris (Sebastian Stan), the 'FBI' partner with whom she had a brief but meaningful romance. But Bell’s problems are not confined to the past. She's increasingly at odds with her rebellious sixteen-year-old daughter Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn), from whom she is estranged. Her clumsy attempts to reach out to Shelby consistently backfire, exacerbating Bell’s overwhelming sense of hopelessness and loss. As she hones in on Silas, the demons of her compromised past emerge, and Bell must come to terms with her own culpability in what happened before she can entertain any hope of redemption. Erin Bell is a troubled male cop. It's about a woman coming to terms with how she’s lived her life and trying to find some way to move forward. But it’s also a crime thriller about someone who, when she was younger, was placed in a dangerous situation she couldn’t handle and has been living with the repercussions ever since. Additionally, it’s a manhunt about a woman who's on an obsessive and destructive mission, the consequences of which are slowly unveiled. In the story, Bell can be an unpleasant, uncompromising person, often to her own detriment. She's’s constantly breaking rules. She’s a bad partner and a bad mom but even though she messes up, she keeps trying. There’s something so relatable about her persistence even though, with all the best intentions, her plans often go awry. Even when she’s doing things that are questionable, you keep hoping that in the end, she will be able to heal this wound that happened long ago. We're bearing witness for women like Erin Bell whose lives are thorny, women who’ve had to make so many compromises. In a film rich with visuals, the most immediate and most shocking one is the first appearance of Bell. While recognizable, Bell is utterly transformed; the face and physique show years of neglect and distress. Her eyes have a haunted quality. Erin’s face is a map of time and regret. She has deliberately sabotaged her body and it shows her desire to hurt it. Nowhere is this contrast more pronounced than the scenes of Bell in her earlier days as an undercover 'FBI' agent. When we see her in flashback, events that happened seventeen years earlier, we're even more startled by her decline. In the flashbacks she’s fresh and open and there’s a kind of reckless enthusiasm about her. She was working undercover then, and she and her partner, who were playing a couple, actually fall in love. And we see that light in their eyes whereas, in the present, we see what’s happened to her as a result of losing all of that. Whereas as Erin, her skin has a kind of leathery quality that can happen in the perpetually sunny climate of Los Angeles and the desert. While the story is laced with characters whose motives are sometimes as circumspect as Bell’s, the city of Los Angeles and it's surrounding desert communities have a co-starring role as well. The environment, through which Bell pursues the bad guy, tries to repair her broken mother-daughter relationship and wrestles with her personal demons enhances the story, giving it a specificity and unique flavor. As the grizzled detective pursues her nemesis and his-cohorts, she spends a great deal of time behind the wheel of her car traveling to various parts of the city and its environs to areas that are definitely not postcard pretty and which even many native Angelenos have never explored. The script realistically lays out Los Angeles. The neighborhoods have character and Erin’s travels from one part of the city to the other are an almost epic journey. Even the individual freeways have their own purpose and personality. The city of Los Angeles has an almost palpable persona in the film. The film captures that harsh light that just hits you in the face. It’s gritty without being dirty or dark. Chris is Erin Bell’s onetime undercover detective partner and lover. He's a classic leading man charisma, but never overplays it. As the story progresses, he lets us see that Chris is also human; that he’s beginning to enjoy this undercover assignment and his tenderness for Erin becomes real. Silas is Bell’s elusive prey and the former gang leader who has haunted her life for the better part of two decades. Silas as a diabolical mastermind. Someone who's self-aggrandizing but also totally wrong, a small-time sleaze ball. That smallness helps guide the audience to a larger question about Erin’s real motives. Petra is the drug addicted spoiled-rich-girl gang member, who like her former boyfriend Silas, is on the downslide. She's a rich miscreant who has tragically gone on a terrible path for reasons that are not totally her own fault. Maslany invested her with a humanizing element of pathos, again bringing added nuance to the character. She's a well-to-do Beverly Hills girl who, by the time she’s eighteen, has fallen off the cliff due to substance abuse. When we see her seventeen years later, like Erin, she's a wreck. Not only has the long-term drug use damaged her physically, but she’s not even in her right mind anymore. And you wind up feeling a kind of sympathy for her. Even to the end, she still sees herself as privileged. "Destroyer" is, at it's core, a film about confronting your mistakes and making the brave decision to be accountable for your actions. Within the relatable frameworks of crime thriller and cop movie, it’s also an insistent character study, hinging on the wounded but resilient psychic landscape of an 'LAPD' detective named Erin Bell. The criminal underworld she investigates, alongside a storytelling structure that allows for narrative surprise, recall films like "Heat" and "The Usual Suspects". The screenplay based on mutual love of crime movies and interest in Los Angeles diverse neighborhoods and populations. It's a novelistic movie with an emphasis on character, a style reminiscent of classic 1970s cop films like "Serpico" and "The French Connection". The storyline pushes the limit of the police detective genre, juggling time frames with satisfying action set pieces and surprise reveals all built around a challenging central character who's at best an anti-hero, and certainly someone who has made some morally compromised choices. It’s made more modern and relevant by it's complicated female lead. The look and feel of the film reflects the world of extremes it inhabits; a seductive mirage of blasting Los Angeles sunlight and dreamy blankets of coastal fog, fueled by the sonic assault of 1990’s desert-metal and the pop confections of today’s top 40 radio. Though "Destroyer" moves between two distinct time-frames, it primarily occupies the Los Angeles of today, a '21st Century' melting pot of corrupt lawyers and small-time crooks, gun dealers and local preachers, hard-working middle-class laborers and charismatic charlatans. This vast city, connected by sprawling freeway systems and dotted with neighborhoods as diverse as it's people; is itself a mirror of Erin Bell’s divided soul; humming with secrets and lies, struggling to find what’s real in a landscape of carefully cultivated surfaces. While much of the visual approach to the film should be undeniably visceral and raw, there are opportunities for unexpected beauty and lyricism. The moments of redemption, both visual and moral, should be rare but hard-won. "Destroyer" aims to uncover all kinds of primal destroyers, money, greed, hunger, but will also reveal the insidious qualities of memory, denial and the inexorable march of time itself. While society’s destructive impulses seem to have reached an apocalyptic peak, it’s still the peculiar will of an individual to sabotage herself that the most compelling and human to explore. In witnessing Erin Bell’s self-destruction, we're forced to confront our own personal destroyers. In the end she pays a terrible price for her redemption, but she finds it nonetheless. The audience experiences the spiral of regret and shame that powers her odyssey back into the past, but also witnesses the heroic journey of a morally compromised character, a woman who eventually decides to right a wrong at any cost. Haunted by guilt and loss, when an old nemesis resurfaces, she becomes hell bent on finding him, seeing it as her one last shot at redemption. As a parable, "Destroyer" is a bracing woman-against-herself story. It's a gritty, riveting and narratively complex crime thriller. Men and women will be drawn by the action and the thrill ride you only get by seeing a movie in a theater with other people; where you can applaud and cheer and cry and have a tension in your gut from the very first scene. It will totally satisfy any moviegoer looking for a gritty, pulpy thriller. And for the faint of heart, there is also surprising sensitivity and delicacy. Underneath all the grit and the action there's a humanity and emotion and a sense of redemption we don’t normally see in movies of this genre. It truly transcends the genre. Ultimately, "Destroyer" is about moral accountability. The film arrives at a moment in our culture when we need to take a really close look at how we behave towards each other, as people, as fellow citizens and as nations. Maybe that’s all our stories can ask for at this point of such uncertainty and chaos, one person making a change.