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(Release Info London schedule; February 16th, 2019, Aubin Cinema, London E2, 64–66 Redchurch Street, Shoreditch, London, England, E2 7DP, 12:00 PM) "Cold Pursuit" Welcome to Kehoe, it’s -10 degrees and counting at this glitzy ski resort in 'The Rocky Mountains'. The local police aren’t used to much action until Kyle (Micheál Richardson) the son of unassuming town snowplough driver, Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson), is murdered at the order of Viking (Tom Bateman), a flamboyant drug lord. Nels is a family man whose quiet life with his wife Grace (Laura Dern) is upended following the mysterious death of their son. Nels search for justice turns into a vengeful hunt for Viking, he believes is connected to the death. As one by one of Viking’s associates disappear, Nels goes from upstanding citizen to ice-cold vigilante, letting nothing, and no one, get in his way. Fueled by rage and armed with heavy machinery, Nels sets out to dismantle the cartel one man at a time, but his understanding of murder comes mainly from what he read in a crime novel. As the bodies pile up, his actions ignite a turf war between Viking and his long-standing rival White Bull (Tom Jackson), a soulful 'Native-American' mafia boss, that will quickly escalate and turn the small town’s bright white slopes blood-red. "Cold Pursuit" is a whirlwind of icy revenge and violence. An action thriller infused with irreverent dark humor. A whole can of worms. That’s describes what Liam Neeson's character opens in Hans Petter Moland’s blisteringly violent and bitingly hilarious "Cold Pursuit". Nels goes out on a path of vengeance, but doesn’t realise what he’s getting himself into. He thinks he’s going after one guy who killed his son. In actual fact, it all escalates into a whirlwind of vengeance and violence. And it all has this grain of dark humour running through it, if you can imagine that. This twisted revenge story swirls around Nels Coxman, a snowplough driver in the Colorado ski resort of Kehoe. Just named 'Citizen Of The Year' for his services in keeping the roads open to the remote town, Coxman’s life swiftly spirals into amateur retribution and an escalating pile of corpses when his son is mistakenly killed by local gangsters over a stash of missing drugs. All he knows about killing people is what he read in a crime novel, but Coxman sets off with a sawn-off hunting rifle, and unwittingly begins a chain of events that will include a snowbound turf war, kidnapping, two rival crime lords and a host of hoodlums with colourful nicknames like ''Mustang' (Dominick Lombardozzi), and 'Smoke' (Nathaniel Arcand). Nels is a father out for revenge against the men who've put his offspring in danger, may sound like it shares some 'DNA' with that of "Cold Pursuit". He’s just a regular guy. Happily married to a wonderful lady Grace, one child, a boy of 21. They’re pretty close, Nels and Kyle. There’s a bond between them that’s kind of unspoken. Kyle is a big American football fan, Broncos to be precise. And Nels isn’t quite as big a fan. And Kyle’s job is to handle baggage at Kehoe airport, the ski resort’s little airport. And everything is normal. Nels lives on the side of a mountain outside this little ski resort called Kehoe. And his job during the winter months is to keep a section of the road open, because they get incredible amounts of snow. So he has his own little industry, his own little workshop where he keeps a snow-blower, snowplough, various machines like that, to keep these roads open. That’s his job. And he keeps a strip of civilisation open through the wilderness for people. That’s his life. That’s what he enjoys. And as a consequence of that, he gets voted Kehoe 'Citizen Of The Year. It’s an annual award, and this year he’s the proud recipient. He has taken a very different path to his family. His father Jaded (Jim Shield) was heavily involved in underground crime, in his younger days. And Nels elder brother Brock (William Forsythe), is also in his father’s trade, let’s put it that way. And then the 'S.H.I.T.' hits the fan, and the relationship breaks down. Kyle meets a horrible death at the hands of these drug dealers, and it completely makes Nels relationship with Grace disintegrate. She can’t handle it at all and goes inward and eventually leaves. So Nels suffers a kind of a double-death, the death of his son, and the death of this very special relationship. And it prompts him to contemplate his own life, and also contemplate a path of vengeance. And that’s what he sets out to do, to avenge, in some way, his son’s death. And get some form of justice. When Nels goes out on his path of vengeance, he doesn’t realise that he’s opening a whole can of worms, especially with the drug industry. He thinks he’s going after one guy that killed his son, and in actual fact this guy works for these other guys, who then work for this other incredibly vicious young criminal called Viking. He runs one drug cartel and White Bull runs another drug cartel. And Nels gets caught in between all this. So this whole vengeance thing escalates into a kind of a whirlwind of vengeance and violence, while still having this grain of dark humour running through it, if you can imagine that! It’s a classic revenge movie, but with a deep thread of dark humour running through it, with some very, very interesting, well-drawn, three dimensional bad guys who give the film it's humour ballast. In the movie, Nels has long ago chosen a different path from his dodgy father and brother. He’s a good man, who nonetheless gets sucked into this violence. you can’t escape your past. That detail is there to at least give Nels the possibility to access some tools that a complete outsider wouldn’t have access to. And also it offers an insight into his character and into his choices in life. Unlike his father and brother he's chosen an honest life, as snow-plow driver. The real irony is that he’s named 'Citizen Of The Year', and then the first thing he does is go out and kill people. Nels intention is that it’s good to take the piss out of everybody, to use the British expression. Nobody in the film is exempt from being made fun of, including 'The Native American' characters, and including Nels himself. It all serves a purpose. Like when they go to a morgue and they’re raising Nels son’s body up on a gurney, and it’s the worst possible moment, but while it’s not being played for laughs, there's also the idea that, this is taking too long to get the body up so they can see it. Throughout the movie is a sense of nobody is exempt from the perhaps awfulness of things, the folly of human existence. In a story filled with complexity, the inclusion of 'Native American' characters is essential, even as "Cold Pursuit" puts absolutely everybody in the crosshairs. Not least the two other fathers that Nels journey will slam him into. The first is Viking, the psychotic local drug lord. The second is White Bull, who brings a soulful gravitas to his rival gang leader, who runs his gang of tough 'Native Americans', who are as deadpan as they're deadly, with a dignity that will be tested to it's very limits. These are all bad guys. There are no good guys in this movie. So you've to start there, and then decipher. It's a conflict that will end with gallons of blood spilled across bright whites. In the movie, the female characters are the ones who are smart enough to distance themselves from the actions of the men, or their stupidity. The men in the movie are domineering, self-important and oblivious to the humor. They're deadly serious. Or dead. Audiences will be emotionally invested in the characters, satisfied with it as an action film, and also be surprised by how funny it's. It’s a film where that balance has to be just right. Viking is a cinematic gangster boss for the ages. He’s a murdering creep, but then he’s tender and jealous. Viking doesn’t really operate on the same wavelength as anyone else. He’s a psychopath. Just when you think he’s going down one road, he flips it and goes down another. So, you might think, oh, he’s about to be violent, and then he might be seductive and charming. Or, oh, he’s about to be funny, and then he cuts off someone’s head. Viking’s job in this is that he runs a club, but really that’s just a front and a bit of a vanity thing for him. He likes the idea of being a club owner, but, really, his main job is a drug dealer. He supplies cocaine for the town of Kehoe, and he’s got a lot of people who work for him and do that. But he inherited that from his father, so, really, he hasn’t built up an empire, he’s one of those spoilt brats who’s inherited something but wears it like a crown. He loves that he’s seen as this powerful guy. But he hasn’t done himself anything to deserve that status. He’s not the greatest family man either. They’re another dimension to this bizarre character, because you think he’s this psychopath, a drug dealer, a murdering creep, but then suddenly you see him being very tender to his child and jealous of his wife Aya (Julia Jones), so he still has human attributes that we can all connect to. His wife has divorced him and they’re in the process of fighting over the custody of their child. They both obviously want custody, but Viking wants it more as he sees his child a bit like a sports car, you know? He gets interested at why he’s getting upset, or he’s confused about these feelings. And the vanity is there as well, that his wife has left him. She’s so beautiful and glamorous and she leaves him, and that dents his pride above anything else. It’s not necessarily that the love of his life has left him and he’s heartbroken, it’s that this wife doesn’t need him anymore, and she’s got out from his grasp. He likes to hold everyone in the whole world in the palm of his hand and have control over them. He's the catalyst for everything that happens. He constantly keeps the audience guessing. Vengence knows no boundaries. In "Cold Pursuit, that notion extends from the quiet man, Nels Coxman, who thought he had escaped his family’s blood legacy to the descendants of indigenous people butchered and betrayed. Yet even among this tapestry, the character of White Bull stands apart. White Bull’s protection of his family and his territory is in direct relation to his values and his history. He's a man who's offered a chance when he was younger to stand close to the same playing field as those who long looked down on tribal people. Now, at age 70, White Bull is a criminal force to be reckoned with; though in keeping with the business he runs, he has attained his stature by unethical, and illegal, means. He's a cartel leader going, literally, sometimes, head to head with the evil Viking. He's in fact ‘Indian’, who by and large doesn’t get represented that way in the movie. They aren’t a tribe, they’re a collective group of 'Native American' men who come from all parts. Unlike in the original Norweigian film, having this crime gang be 'Native Americans' on land their ancestors lived on creates another kind of tension with Viking, who audiences see develop another level of awfulness and villainy as he denigrates White Bull’s people’s history on the land. Viking thinks this piece of Colorado around Denver and Kehoe is all his territory because his father, Bullet (Kris Hawkins), was here before him. It’s another level of his myopia of course, since Viking has no understanding of anything larger than that. Yet Viking’s ex-wife Aya is 'Native American' too, so there’s that complication. It's interesting and fun to show White Bull’s team of gangsters having quirky conversations, and expand their personalities and show they've their own peccadilloes, just as Viking’s men have, if not more so. There's also, of course, more than a grain of truth in terms of the issues facing 'The Native American' population that, while fictionalized and sensationalized for the purpose of a thriller, have echoes in "Cold Pursuit". But of course, another major factor in "Cold Pursuit" is it's irreverence, and the way it props all of it's characters, no matter who they're, up for a bit of puncturing and humor. And though White Bull is always a man of dignity, there are moments when Viking or other characters show their ignorance by using stereotypes, or even when some of White Bull’s own gang get the upper hand in a situation or two by exploiting the sensitivity around them. Overall, there's a universal sort of eyebrow-raising at the ridiculousness and folly that's a human existence, whether it’s lived as a criminal or as a citizen of the year. This is a film that takes an irreverent jab at everyone. That’s the satirical element of it, part of that's Viking, he's who he's, and he disparages everybody and uses derogratory labelling, which is very telling in regards to figuring him out. He gets his licks in no matter who he’s dealing with, or who his adversary is at the moment. The notion of Viking taking aim at a group that's so other is illuminating. It’s this idea that it’s convenient to have an enemy, somebody Viking can degrade by putting a label on them and perhaps call by a derogatory name. That mechanism is certainly part of the less-favorable aspects of being human. Here, Viking feels entitled and superior to everyone, whether they're black or gay or 'Native American' or whatever, and being able to belittle somebody by putting a derogatory name onto them is part of that mechanism for him. The idea of turf and territory has special meaning when it comes to Viking and White Bull. Because here's Viking thinking, ‘this is my turf, my father was here before me’ and of course White Bull’s gang has a special sensibility to being screwed over, and to defending what they know is theirs. If you harken back to the old, the idea of the West, White Bull’s white gang is indigenous to Colorado and has been for a long time. So you've this uneasy truce that's existed for a long time between White Bull and Viking due to a misunderstanding involving Nels’s son that winds up making White Bull upset, and it results in total war. Even Viking’s nickname evokes a colonizing force coming into existing lands, and the violence that accompanies that. Whereas White Bull is a man of honor. The connection to White Bull, it’s almost an emotional parallel, or maybe a matter of connected but not quite similar paths is fascinating. What none of that does is take away the enjoyment White Bull and his gang have in their day-to-day life, the warmth they feel or the quirkiness with which they view their jobs. He's not threatened by people being individuals. His guys are not afraid of enjoying their live, even when they're on a boring stakeout, their individuality shows. They’re smoking pot, poking fun at each other by throwing snowballs. In a pair of memorable scenes that involve hang-gliding, there are subtle meanings, and a memorable send-off for one character in the film. That hang-gliding scene is 'The Native American' gang simply enjoying the greatness of the landscape they're in. White Bull is enjoying the playful grace of the young skiers, and for his men it's simply the joy of seeing one of their own soar like an eagle. There's something elementary about wanting to fly. Seeing it done so successfully by someone they know, who's Ni not a pro, but who just reaches for the experience out of childish desire, brings joy to their hearts. And yet even the one man that momentarily defied gravity eventually comes crashing down. It’s a terrific mix with White Bull and his gang, because for instance, in a scene at the hotel, they raise their eyebrows when a hotel employee uses the word reservation. They’re using this to get what they want. It’s irreverent. And later White Bull is in the hotel gift shop, and he quietly looks at 'Native American' clothing being sold that we see is actually made in China, and White Bull looks at some of the cheesy sculptures in the shop that turn his tribal legacy into something kitschy to be sold cheap to tourists. It's still important at times to see that their personalities and quirks were able to provide a bit of fun, just as with Viking’s gang. Pursuing it catches up with you eventually, no matter how nice you're. Nels wife talks her lost hopes and dreams, her love of pot, and her fears for her husband. Grace is a rebel, but in a very different way than Nels. She’s probably into punk and deeply invested in music, and was a hippy of sorts. And as she's taking off towards what she's expecting to be, to live this sort of wild, free life, she fell in love, and ended up choosing to stay for this man. And then they've a family. So, as has happened for many women, you've this very driven passion, but make a choice. So there’s a longing she may have always had. So it gives a seed to some place for her to go in her pain. There’s a chemistry and intimacy and friendship between two people, but when a tragedy occurs, and two people handle it so completely differently, they can lose each other, not only themselves, in it. Grace needs to process it, and Nels needs to completely shut off. So there’s no conversation, no healing, no dialogue, and the intimacy is lost. And he has a way that he’s going to manage his agony. And not only is it entirely opposed to how you dealing with it, but also you left removed from it because he’s on this mission. He’s lost himself in this drive for revenge. Meet the female cop rising to the surface in a sea of male stupidity. Everyone feels like a secret weirdo. Kim (Emmy Rossum) is a young woman fight for herself and what she believes in in a male-dominated world. Not just within a criminal world but within her own workplace in the police force, too. She’s an eager young rookie cop, idealistic and highly moral but shaded too. She's very idealistic about right and wrong. And the town she’s in is one where there doesn’t seem to be a lot of crime. And when all these dead bodies start piling up, it’s kind of exciting for her because suddenly she has something to do. She’s living in a slightly misogynistic world where her partner, who’s kind of like your stereotypical white male, is very interested in her dating life. And not that interested in doing the right thing. That’s just a really interesting picture to draw. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if she solves the case or gets the bad guys. Kim is this hard-charging, aggressive young police officer, and she wants to make her mark. She’s dying to pull out her gun and shoot somebody. It’s really that she sticks to her ideals and to her guns, no pun intended, throughout her journey. Kim is less than ably abetted by Gip (John Doman), her police partner who would just like to live and let live. His idea of community policing is to the let the locals do what they want? He’s a pretty laid-back character. He’s constantly trying to put her back in her box. But it’s always been a very low key, behind the scenes, nobody gets hurt, kind of crime. Basically dealing with the drug trade, and servicing people who come there to ski, to have sex and get high. And his philosophy has always been to let them do what they want to do, and now the bodies are starting to pile up. And, of course, his partner is hot to trot and get out and get the bad guys, and he's trying to keep her in the squad car. One of the few people not scared by Viking his Aya, the woman who married him, and survived. Viking is a raging lunatic. His house is like the lion’s den. But she won’t let him win. So when, at a certain point, she wanted to get out, everything just went to hell. And now she still has to deal with him because they've a kid together, Ryan (Nicholas Holmes). Her whole objective is trying to get full custody of Ryan. And it’s a challenge because with her and Viking it’s almost like a tennis match, the power goes back and forth. But she wins all the time, and that’s her whole point, every time she sees him, she goes in to try and win a battle. She starts a fight, and then she needs to win it. It’s a completely different way of looking at relationships or parenting, or anything. The modern 'American West' provides a chillingly perfect setting; a snowed-in ski resort town with a dwindling population. Because this location is so remote, the story seems to take place out of time, in a way. Doubling as "Cold Pursuit's" small Colorado ski resort of Kehoe. This Alberta location is a character in it's own and key to it's chilling power. On the surface, Kehoe is a tranquil destination, designed for fun and sporty relaxation. But, under it's smooth, white powdery surface runs a blood-red river of murder and mayhem. Frankly, as a holiday spot it’s about as safe as taking a moonlit skinny-dip off 'Amity Island'. All of these characters are strange in their own way. They’re surprising and bizarre. They’re weird, and everyone feels like a secret weirdo. In this movie there’s a gangster who only wants his kid to be macrobiotic and super-healthy, and a family man who becomes a murderer, and a young cop who’s eager to see a dead body because that means something to do. These are all strange things that we wouldn’t necessarily admit about ourselves. It has something really tangibly bizarre that feels weirdly familiar in it's specificity. Transfer a Norwegian thriller into America’s crime subculture and make it feel dangerous and funny. Comparisons to classic Coen brothers movies, "Fargo", in particular, "Cold Pursuit" greets Hans Petter Moland’s original Norwegian film, "In Order Of Disappearance". You can also drew parallels to the depth and wit of dialogue of early Quentin Tarantino. But while Moland is obviously delighted to have his work placed in those two ballparks, and the film has his own unique style with a inspiration going back further to a classic Hollywood great. It’s kind of a heavy theme, well suited for a dark comedy. There's a desire to not be restrained by genre, to allow different genres to happily live next to each other, to be genuinely horrifying and tragic, but also worth laughing at, like life is. This isn’t your typical revenge movie. It’s a movie about the futility of vengeance. Which is a little bit of an oxymoron, because you get to have your cake, and eat it too! The result is something genuinely unique, a movie with incredible action, shot through with an undercurrent of knowing humour. Film history is full of Westerns where 'Native Americans' are merely used for plot purposes, or used as adversaries based on preconceived notions, they’ve been seen either as savages, ruthless warriors, victims, or just something else that serves the white point of view. Those who some view as strangers are, in fact, on their own land. The film has great interest prior to this in American history in general and the plight of American indigenous people, and how they're pushed off of their own land and had to suffer as a nation. It makes it easier to go with what's happening in the sense that these people are getting away with this stuff because it's so remote and so snowy and there's so many long stretches with no people around. The remoteness is really important to this story, both in the feel it gives you and in the sense of, You've got to make your own rules out here. And that’s kind of a classic American theme of the West. "Cold Pursuit" is a very good, character-driven revenge thriller, with very, very interesting bad guys and a very dark undercurrent, with an element of humour that runs through it that’s really appealing. It’s focussed on revenge as being not a very viable strategy for a fruitful life, for the men and for their families. It’s just not a very good idea, even though it’s fun to see people do it. If you’re doing anything satirical then the dichotomy is a very big portion of the satire. That incongruity of motive and action. They're oblivious to the humour that surrounds them and the result of their actions. The film has a very serious departure point and then it unfolds and expands into these new arenas. The absurdity has to grow. You've to allow people to discover it for themselves and laugh when they want. There’s a moment in the scene in the morgue where a large part of the audience start to suspect there’s something fishy about this film. People tend to realise then that it's permissible to laugh. It’s about what happens when you don’t consider what you’re feeling, and you take, oddly, what you think is the path of least resistance, which is revenge. As a way to deal with your feelings, you’re just going to create hell, and end up far worse off than when you started. And we play it out in a daydream, many of us, or seek it in subtler forms, emotional revenge on people who've hurt us, which is still potentially damaging. Perhaps it’ll make us see the mess we could make, if we actually stayed true to the shadow of what we’re feeling.

(Release Info London schedule; February 15th, 2019, Empire Walthamstow The Scene, 267 High Street, Walthamstow, London, E17 7FD, 10:25 AM) "The Kid Who Would Be King" Old school magic meets the modern world in the epic adventure "The Kid Who Would Be King". Alex (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) thinks he's just another nobody, until he stumbles on the mythical 'Sword In The Stone', 'Excalibur'. Now, he must unite his friends and enemies into a band of knights and, together with the legendary wizard Merlin (Patrick Stewart), take on the wicked enchantress Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson). With the future at stake, Alex must become the great leader he never dreamed he could be. Alex is a modern kid on the cusp of adolescence who, feeling like a nobody, is starting to become a little cynical about the world around him. Alex lives with his mum (Denise Gough) and she can’t really spend that much time with him because she has to work. He’s quite disillusioned because his dad’s left them, and he and his one friend Bedders (Dean Chaumoo) get bullied at school. He thinks there’s no hope, and life’s not going to get any better, he’s just another nobody kid. When you’re at that age, you're trying to figure out what the world is and what you've to do to get ahead in it. You start to see a connection between what kind of circumstances you’re born into and where you might end up. So, at the beginning of the movie, when Alex gets punished after trying to save his friend from being bullied, he realizes that however righteous and noble you try to be, the world can still be unjust. But then obviously when he stumbles across the sword everything changes. When he finds 'The Sword In The Stone', the books Alex has read about the myth of 'Excalibur' convince him that he’s the once and future king. But possessing the sword doesn’t actually help him that much. It’s not as if the government is suddenly going to acknowledge his position, it’s not as if there isn’t already a royal family. And the immediate obstacle in front of him is to deal with these undead knights that rise up out of the ground and try to take the sword from him. So he’s a perfectly normal kid who’s suddenly thrust into this massive adventure, while also trying to fill the shoes of 'King Arthur', who himself found 'Excalibur' when Britain was a lost and leaderless place. Arthur’s teacher, the wizard Merlin, is among the most famous characters in literature and the prototype for many characters in popular culture, including Obi-Wan Kenobi as well as Dumbledore and Gandalf. Like the legendary Merlin, the film’s Merlin is a combination of energies, he’s incredibly wise and mystical but also playful and a little bit subversive, capable of lying, manipulating and tricking you. Merlin is a very important character in the movie, because he has to have real presence and charisma. He appears in moments of great crisis, when the kids need to be inspired, frightened, or emboldened by the presence of an authoritative, grown-up wizard. Bedders, Alex’s best friend, is based on Sir Bedivere, one of 'King Arthur’s' most loyal knights. Bedders is completely devoted to Alex and very earnest. Whereas Alex is full of doubts and quite cynical, Bedders is still very much a kid. He still believes in all the fantasies and legends of childhood fiction, and is desperate for them to be real. When they actually become real, he’s both thrilled and terrified. Bedders is the kid that clings onto childhood when all his friends are turning their backs on that and heading into adulthood. He’s the sort of friend you might suddenly find yourself a little bit embarrassed by when you start to enter adolescence. He's vulnerable and sweet, but over the course of the story transforms into a kick-ass hero. Lance (Tom Taylor), who starts out as a bullie, are inspired by the legendary Sir Lancelot. In 'Arthurian Legend', Lancelot is quite a confused character. He’s this incredibly capable knight, who can’t find an adversary worthy of him in battle, until he comes across Arthur. Only then does he find somebody who's worthy of his loyalty. But he ends up betraying Arthur by having an affair with his wife Guinevere (Genevieve O'Reilly) and in so doing causes Camelot to disband. Like Lancelot, our Lance is also confused, a combination of loyalty, betrayal, heroism, and dastardliness. At the beginning of the film he’s a bully, but there are reasons why. His parents are absent and just send him money. That’s how his parents have always shown their love to him, so at school he just goes around bullying kids for money because that’s the only way he knows how to feel like anything. He has poise and good looks, but he doesn’t know what to do with his power, so he misuses his attributes for evil. He bullies people and is pompous and arrogant, following this bad path all the way through to the middle of the movie, where he realizes how foolish he’s been. The presence of the sword and the adventure they’re on make him figure out the error of his ways and he ultimately becomes one of Alex’s most loyal knights.   Like the Sir Kaye (Rhianna Dorris) of legend, the films Kaye is someone who's arrogant and haughty but also sycophantic. Beholden to Lance, she's afraid to assert her intelligence and become independent in her own right. Kaye is a clever girl, who doesn’t really get the chance to express that until later in the story when she realizes that Lance has drawn them both down this dead-end path. Kaye is this strong female, very blunt and straight forward, but really she’s just a normal teenage girl. She doesn’t really care about what you've to say in a conversation, she just says what she says, and walks away. She has her cheeky moments, and she’s got a lot of attitude. So, she emerges as somebody who is using her talents for bad purposes, realizes the error of her ways, and becomes an extremely capable, brave, and loyal knight by the end of the movie. One of the most vivid characters in the legend is the sorceress Morgana, 'King Arthur’s' half-sister and illegitimate offspring of a magical birth. Because she has had her inheritance and the sword taken away from her, she becomes evil, jealous, and covetous of the sword, which she believes is rightfully hers. Morgana is trapped by Arthur and Merlin underground, bound into the bowels of 'The Earth' by magic, where she remains dormant for centuries. In the script, goodness is diminishing in the world. People are becoming more selfish, and nations have grown increasingly divided. It's this shift towards darkness, as well as a total solar eclipse, that gives Morgana the strength to break free and return. When she discovers the sword has come back, she immediately wants it, and seeks to destroy whoever has it. There’s an expectation these days for villains to have terrific complexity, and to be very sympathetic, which sometimes robs them of a certain level of menace. She's a character who has her reasons for being evil, but is essentially a bad person, with these terrifying abilities to shape-shift and transform into other creatures. Also, she thinks she’s going to have a very easy time, because she’s fighting kids, but doesn’t really bargain for the strength and perseverance of the army of young knights that assembles to fight her. Based on one of the most famous myths of all time, "The Kid Who Would Be King" approaches the legend of 'King Arthur' and his knights in a completely new way, bringing it into the modern world and making it relevant for contemporary audiences. The sword 'Excalibur' coming out of a bathtub; the juxtaposition of the domestic and the modern with the ancient myth. Whoever was able to pull the sword from the stone became king. But how can that fitted in with today’s 'British' royal family. There's one of the world’s great love stories, that of Guinevere and Arthur, and Guinevere and Sir Lancelot. The language is so vivid and unusual, and yet very characteristic of the period Mallory was writing about. That, and the whole philosophy of how the power of good can triumph over evil. How in the world, and this is in, you've to be on the lookout for those people or creatures who seek to destroy all that's good. The idea behind this movie is that myths and legends like the story of 'King Arthur' don’t have a huge amount of basis in historical fact. They’re written and rewritten to suit the needs of the time, and in fact, it’s important that different generations rewrite legends anew for themselves. The heart of the film is based on the chivalric code that the wizard Merlin teaches young Arthur in the legend. It's about an ordinary boy who discovers 'The Sword In The Stone'. This is the set of laws that 'King Arthur’s' knights abided by, which dictated earnest moral behavior, honoring the people you love, persevering, refraining from offense and telling the truth. The film takes that moral code and applies it to modern kids, to see what it's value is in today’s worldm The kids in this movie go on a journey from being a little bit rough-and-tumble, rude and angry with each other, to a place where they understand the value of that basic moral code and apply it to their modern world. There's also a message for kids that explains the value of these ancient ideals, that they might have some relevance to the way we live today. The magic in this film isn’t the sort of sparkly, spangly, escapist magic that we’re used to seeing in fantasy films. Instead of romanticized ancient spell books and  magic wands, our magic is much more physical and practical. When something transforms in the movie you can really feel it. When Merlin performs magic, it’s by intricate combinations of hand movements that create a physical impact on the characters and environment nearby. Whil there have been many films which explore Arthurian legend, we've never seen the story of Arthur as a modern piece, with up-to-date young kids in hoodies and sneakers, with modern, makeshift armor on top of it. It’s a fantastic mixture of old and new, clashing and complimenting in a way which is lovely. An incredibly cinematic, beautiful, man-made hill, part burial mound and part who knows what, with these crazy, beautiful contours, that has an extraordinary history, and is very tied into biblical and Arthurian mythology. There’s a whole culture of mysticism and exoticism based around it but hasn’t really been seen in a movie before now.

A dramatic science fiction story that revolves around an object that can provide eternal love to whoever posses it, known as the "Heart of Stone'. Four very different characters are impacted by the power it possesses.

Crash, Bang, Wallop...what a franchise! Check out the pulse-racing movie trailer for Fast and the Furious 8

Does whatever a spidey does...it's the movie trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming, which starts with the phrase "Underoos" being bellowed by Robert Downey Jr....you're welcome

Who's up for another DC movie?...Well either way here's the Justice League trailer starring a ton of awesome superheroes.

Directed by Garth Davis Starring Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Tahar Rahim MARY MAGDALENE is an authentic and humanistic portrait of one of the most enigmatic and misunderstood spiritual figures in history. The biblical biopic tells the story of Mary (Rooney Mara), a young woman in search of a new way of living. Constricted by the hierarchies of the day, Mary defies her traditional family to join a new social movement led by the charismatic Jesus of Nazareth (Joaquin Phoenix). She soon finds a place for herself within the movement and at the heart of a journey that will lead to Jerusalem. Mary Magdalene is released in the UK on March 16th 2018

■ (Release Info U.K. schedule, March 21st, 2015, Picturehouse ARTS 38-39 St. Andrew's St, Cambridge CB2 3AR, 10:15 AM) https://www.picturehouses.com/cinema/Arts_Picturehouse_Cambridge/film/out-of-blue-plus-live-qanda-with-carol-morley ■ (Release Info London schedule; March 30th, 2019, Picturehouse Central Cinemas Ltd 7th Floor, St Vincent House, 30 Orange Street, London, WC2H 7HH, 18:30 PM) https://www.picturehouses.com/cinema/Picturehouse_Central/film/out-of-blue-plus-live-qanda-with-carol-morley ■ (April 5th, 2019, The Lexi Cinema, 194b Chamberlayne Road Kensal Rise, London NW10 3JU, 18:30 PM) https://thelexicinema.co.uk/film/out-blue https://thelexicinema.co.uk/find-us "Out Of Blue" When leading astrophysicist and black hole specialist Jennifer Rockwell (Mamie Gummer) is found shot to death in her New Orleans observatory, unconventional detective Mike Hoolihan (Patricia Clarkson) is responsible for investigating the scene of the crime. Strangely, this highly experienced police woman is greatly disturbed by the sight of the victim lying face down, her face shot off, in a large pool of blood. Is detective Hoolihan starting to soften under her thick professional armour? This doesn’t stop her from becoming so immersed in investigating the case that at times it seems as if she's losing her mind. Which raises the question of the extent to which she's really an objective outsider. As Mike tumbles down the rabbit hole of the disturbing, labyrinthine case, she finds herself grappling with increasingly existential questions of quantum mechanics, parallel universes, and exploding stars, cosmic secrets that may hold the key to unraveling the crime, while throwing into doubt her very understanding of reality. The hunt for the killer draws the detective into an even larger mystery; the nature of the universe itself. In this whodunit, with nods to the golden age of film noir, the search for the truth leads the detective into the black hole of her own past. "Out Of Blue" opens with the soon to be dead astrophysicist Jennifer Rockwell observing the night sky and stating. You can tell a lot by looking. This act of looking links Jennifer and Mike, who in different ways have been involved in the act of looking their whole adult lives, one at clues in the sky, the other at clues on the ground. From the moment Mike appears, the point of view of the film is hers. But are we watching a mind create its own unique reality? Is what we're watching a delusion? Are Mike’s intrusive experiences hallucinations? Do we really know what's real and what's the creation of Mike’s mind? Or have we found ourselves in a parallel universe? The reliability of what we see, and what we choose to look at, is a massive through-line in "Out Of Blue". Towards the end, Mike gives her magnifying glass to Bray Rockwell (Todd Mann), brother of Jennifer, and tells him to look at a clue. Through the eyes of a fucking crazy lady detective cop, he says, reluctant to take on her female gaze. But he does, and by looking through her eyes, a powerful truth finally emerges. Mike isn’t immediately knowable or likeable often perceived as a big flaw in characterisations of women, she isn’t trying to court sympathy or connection. Mike has secrets and hidden dimensions and offering up a truly complex portrait. Mike is a character who resists the standard definitions of how women should be. Within the film she says it herself; there are many ways to be a woman. Embedded into Detective Mike Hoolihan’s investigation, that ultimately reveal to be an investigation into herself, are some of the discoveries about quantum physics, cosmology and psychology. As the film starts out, Mike’s world to feel familiar, like a standard police procedural, and then to travel far from that, into the realms of the unexplained and the inner self, and become another kind of mystery. The film loves the idea of the audience finding themselves in Mike’s position, looking for clues anywhere and everywhere, as they inhabit her tangled web of uncertainty. We watch the characters and their often hidden motivations. The film explores the idea that we all wear masks, that a person is not necessarily who they seem to be. All of the characters in "Out of Blue" are wearing a mask in one way or another, hidden from view in plain sight.  Even the city of New Orleans, with it's magical thinking, voodoo, and the beads and masks of 'Mardi Gras', is disguised through windows and oblique views. New Orleans was self-dubbed in the 1930’s, the city that care forgot, which was intended to romanticise a hot, laid–back city; but the slogan can also be interpreted as a city that6s, consciously or unconsciously, hiding it's complicated and messy past; just like Mike is. The screenplay for "Out of Blue" is an adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel 'Night Train'. The film is inspired by homicide departments. We're haunted by how unoccupied the big communal office spaces often are and how one department saved on energy by keeping the overhead lights off, so it becomes lit by an array of lamps brought from home. It's about the personalities of the detectives, to the sounds around them, to how much paperwork they did, to the way they responded and were shaped by their brutal, crime-riddled world. To how night drifted into day and day into night. The film discovers that we all come from stardust, and therefore are all biologically connected to each other. We see the characters as a constellation of stars, and we drawn into the mysteries of their universe and their minds. Suicide runs through the film. It's a cosmopolitan theme. It feels almost occult, the characters are taking over our mind, seeping into our dreams, and they're encouraging us to alter the nature of their story. "Out Of Blue" encapsulates what so much of the film is about, the blue of the night planet, the blue of the police, the blue of human emotion and the thin blue line of our atmosphere. The film is obsessed with the power of the gaze, how we construct it, who possesses it. Awash in dreamlike, neo-noir atmosphere, this one-of-a-kind thriller is both a tantalizing whodunnit and a rich, metaphysical mind-bender.

(St. Louis, Missouri Film Festival, April 28th, 2019, Landmark Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar Boulevard St. Louis, MO 63130, 5.30 pm) http://www.cinemastlouis.org/schedule "Vita & Virginia" "Vita & Virginia" details the intimate relationship between author Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki) and socialite, Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton), which was to become the inspiration for Woolf’s Modernist novel, 'Orlando: A Biography'. The affair and the friendship between literary trailblazer Virginia Woolf, and the enigmatic aristocrat Vita Sackville-West, both uncompromising in their insistence to live, love, and create to the fullest, constitutes one of the most fascinating and passionate relationships in literary history. The film tells the story of the birth of the novel their intoxicating encounters inspired; Woolf’s bold experiment in art and androgyny, ‘Orlando’. The year is 1922. Though happily married, Vita is as notorious for her dalliances with women and subversive attitudes toward gender as she's famous for her aristocratic pedigree and writerly success. Virginia a celebrated writer, publisher, and member of 'The Bloomsbury Group', already revolutionising literature. When Vita receives an invitation to 'Bloomsbury', she's elated at the thought of meeting the enigmatic Woolf. When their paths cross, the magnetic Vita decides the beguiling, stubborn and gifted Virginia will be her next conquest, no matter the cost. Between the concern of their husbands, families, and mutual friends, their romance is bound to be tumultuous. The film is a celebration of their unconventional bond; a vivid exploration of gender, sexuality, creativity and passion. Yet tumult can fuel creativity, Vita's singular persona will eventually be channelled into one of Virginia's greatest works, ‘Orlando'. The idiosyncratic worlds of artists and aristocracy collide in "Vita & Virginia", which brings into focus the years of friendship, sex, love and letter writing between two literary powerhouses. Vita Sackville-West is introduced to 'The Effervescent Bloomsbury Set', at the heart of which is Virginia Woolf. Their refusal to play by society’s rules offers an enticing escape to socialite and author Vita, who's no stranger to rule-breaking herself. She's constantly chastised by her overbearing and dismissive mother, Lady Sackville-West (Isabella Rossellini) and resents the duties she must undertake for her bisexual, MP husband, Harold Nicolson (Rupert Penry-Jones). Vita is drawn to the progressive and sexually liberated group of artists, politicians and authors, intrigued particularly by the mystery and apparent aloofness of Virginia. Having a long-held and deep contempt for the upper classes, Leonard Woolf (Peter Ferdinando) is suspicious of this socialite’s sudden appearance in their lives but Virginia persuades him that their publishing house, 'Hogarth Press', should publish Vita’s next book. Something more than a working relationship blooms between the two women; although each writer holds the other in high regard and they're celebrated in their own right, they crave a particular acceptance from each other. Their mutual admiration, though fast becoming charged with a tension and a passion which excites them both, is peppered with doubts. Their backgrounds and sensibilities are so far apart on the social spectrum that their relationship and even friendship seems doomed. A brief but significant visit to Vita’s ancestral home marks their inescapable differences in Virginia’s mind and it reignites her fear that she cannot love others in the same way as they do her. Vita and Harold’s marriage of convenience threatens to crumble as she becomes frustrated and suffocated by the role of submissive and dutiful wife, distracted by the exciting opportunities that being Virginia’s lover offers. There's always a sense that Vita is desperate to lift the curtain on the real Virginia, to reveal the truth behind the myth and Virginia relishes the challenge, even if she's not always entirely comfortable with it. Their relationship oscillates, they circle around each other and there are constant contradictions between what's said and what's meant. It's when they're separated by Harold’s diplomatic responsibilities that the truth pours out. Their letters are infused with a fierce love and longing, a desperation to explore and analyse the heart and the mind; this is where they're most comfortable, each a muse for the other. Vita is a real conundrum, she has a public persona, she has a huge character, very fun-loving, insatiable in all aspects of life but also deeply private and shy. There are always two things going on, which are completely contradictory. She's very loving and caring but could be brutal and cold, altogether a fascinating person. Going into Virginia feels like falling down a rabbit hole. It’s a fascinating abyss, one can really never know her and yet it feels like getting to read her work in a different way to many other people. A lot of the dialogue is taken directly from the letters they wrote, which is hard to naturalise because letter writing is very considered. Vita is fun and cavalier, she comes from a different world and Virginia is somebody who's fascinated by people. She's always trying to absorb things from life and when she recognised that there's something in someone that she could learn from, that she hasn't perhaps accessed before, she's drawn to it. We've to remind ourselves that these people are wordsmith how they spoke. The film is trying to honour the cerebral landscape of these women but also give you something very physical and raw and human, and so much of their story is so physical. Many films focuses on iconic geniuses. First of all, they’re usually men and second of all, it's not interesting to just watch an intelligent person be clever. Over the course of the film, we climb inside Virginia’s mind, particularly when she’s feeling inspired by Vita and certain emotions are woken up. We've these surreal, visual, magical realism trips that suggest what it might be like to see the world through her eyes, which rips it out of the genre of period drama fairly conclusively, it’s become genreless in a way. These two women had extraordinary lives, the scope is enormous. The film is a snapshot of the more intense part of Vita and Virginia’s relationship. It’s also about Virginia connecting to her sexuality, her body and her relationship with sex; that’s something that Vita really gives her. Virginia Woolf is someone who we associate with fragility, if people can be relied on one thing to know about her, it’s the fact that she committed suicide and the fact she struggled her whole life with a spectrum of emotional and psychological challenges. What the film captures and crystallizes is a moment of profound strength, which is Virginia using her amazing intellect to digest and overcome an experience which everyone thinks will overwhelm her. The film tells the story of the moment in which she uses her ability to write and create great work as a way of moving on from a crisis that Vita brings about. It's not a biopic in that sense, we’re looking at a very specific moment, a moment of great strength from a woman who we may otherwise associate with vulnerability. Vita’s world represents castles and grand places, opulence and decadence whereas 'The Bloomsbury Group' side is muted and feels worn and lived-in. 'The Hogarth Press' set is completely ‘wow’, you didn’t know where the set ended. We've these meandering corridors that keep going, you feel like you're in an underground den where all these anarchic ideas are happening! There’s a real contrast in the film because Vita and Virginia are so different, the design is very impressive. In terms of Vita’s costumes, the film wants to get across that she's a trendsetter, she's daring for her time and dressed androgynously. She's very rich so she could spend a lot of money on clothes and is also very well travelled, so the film incorporates some of 'The Middle East' in her costumes. Wev a lot of punk references, David Bowie is a big influence on the film, specifically that androgynous style that he played around with. When you think of the 1920s, you think of flapper girls etc., but the film has a lot more fun not being completely strict to the period. David Bowie meets Keith Richards meets Louise Brooks! Virginia has a more soft, steady silhouette, she’s less confident in her look but very precise in her aesthetics, it's important to keep that constant. She's fragile which is reflected in the fabrics and softer colours. Virginia is soft, like a pool of water, she swims around in blues and cooler colours, which is such a contrast from Vita who wants to dictate so strongly the shape that she carves out in the world as a woman, she looks so different in every scene whereas Virginia looks almost the same throughout. Of course you've to study the real life people but because the actors don’t necessarily look like them, the film moves away from that image. So instead of trying to replicate them, we find the essence of the real people and then go our own way. Recreating 'Charleston House', where 'The Bloomsbury Group' were based, has been a very special thing to do, it’s a world that's created by a bunch of punk artists who wanted to live their own kind of life. It's an iconic place, which is in itself a work of art, is a metaphor for the fact that this film is about a community of characters who designed their lives to serve their passions and their interests and to be free. 'The Hogarth Press' set has this ‘tunnel’ feel to it and at the end of it, is Virginia’s door, it feels very much like the energy is going down the hall into this room where she would be creating. It feels that the flow of energy seemed to come to and from the room. The set itself is underneath this great manor house and it's quite dark and damp, the exact contrast of Vita’s world, so it feels quite right that the light and the colours of the world of the Woolfs contrasted so hugely from the airiness and breeziness of 'The Nicholsons’. What Virginia is doing with 'Hogarth Press' is quite radical and the film depicts that by bringing it into this basement, somewhere underground, not gritty but essentially a working, buzzing environment. The film takes some inspiration from 'The Prohibition Era' in America. Based on Sackville-West and Woolf's personal correspondence and co-scripted by distinguished stage and screen veteran 'Eileen Atkins', "Vita & Virginia" is bold, sensuous, and smart, and will make you swoon. It's a love story, told in a contemporary style, about two women, two writers, who smashed through social barriers to find solace in their forbidden connection. "Vita & Virginia" offers a glimpse into the complex nature of relationships and marriages, questioning what it's to be female and feminine and details the fraught hypocrisies of living in the 1920s. Punctuating the film is Virginia’s well publicised mania, depicted through visual, imaginative metaphors, a reminder of her vulnerability that Vita is eager to dispel. Throughout the story, characters struggle with the unwritten rules of jealousy, revolution, power and the myriad forms that love takes. It's from one such struggle, after Virginia sees Vita with another woman, that 'Orlando: A Biography' is born, canonising Vita forever as Virginia’s muse. "Vita & Virginia stand out from other period dramas because the characters, such as 'The Bloomsbury Group' are so cutting edge for the time. They're pioneers and breaking down a lot of barriers. The 1920s was a time of shaking free of 'The Victorian Era' and the focus is on the people doing just that. The film feels young and fresh. The casting is quite young. This is never going to feel like a sleepy period drama. It should feel incidental that it’s set in 1927, it feels contemporary and punk and edgy. The world that 'The Bloomsbury Group' built for themselves was liberal and progressive, that’s what has dictated the vision for this film. Vita and Virginia’s relationship was light years ahead of it's time so the film doesn't want to be stuck in the past. The script is very bold and unique in the way that it tackles Vita and Virginia’s relationship. It’s intelligent and sharp, the incorporation of their literary canon with the letters and how they speak to each other, it’s an honouring of their work but it brings them into a human realm, and at the centre of it's this love story which is really poignant.