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(Release Info London schedule; May 10th 2019, Electric Cinema, Portobello, 191 Portobello Road, Notting Hill, London W11 2ED, 21:00 pm) "Long Shot" When Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen) reunites with his first crush, one of the most influential women in the world, Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron), he charms her with his self-deprecating humor and his memories of her youthful idealism. As she prepares to make a run for 'The Presidency', Charlotte hires Fred as her speechwriter and sparks fly. Fred Flarsky is a gifted and free-spirited journalist with an affinity for trouble. Charlotte Field is one of the most influential women in the world. Smart, sophisticated, and accomplished, she’s a powerhouse diplomat with a talent for, well, mostly everything. The two have nothing in common, except that she was his babysitter and childhood crush. When Fred unexpectedly reconnects with Charlotte, he charms her with his self-deprecating humor and his memories of her youthful idealism. As she prepares to make a run for 'The Presidency', Charlotte impulsively hires Fred as her speechwriter, much to the dismay of her trusted advisors. A fish out of water on Charlotte’s elite team, Fred is unprepared for her glamourous lifestyle in the limelight. However, sparks fly as their unmistakable chemistry leads to a round-the-world romance and a series of unexpected and dangerous incidents. He might not be 'The Prime Minister Of Canada' (Alexander Skarsgård), but they don’t come much more righteous, fair-minded or dedicated to tell-it-like-you-see-it journalism than Fred Flarsky. It’s just that Fred seems to have also mastered the art of being his own worst enemy, often going a step way too far or stepping on his own feet while trying to do the right thing. When we first meet Fred in the film, he's a very idealistic person who has never quite been able to become the person that he hoped he would be. Fred would describe himself as a highly principled but also highly misunderstood journalist, one who has not really gotten recognition for the risks he takes and the work he creates. But he’s also kind of a self-destructive mess who doesn’t believe in his own worth. That finally starts to shift once Flarsky starts working for Charlotte Field, and begins to grapple with the outlandish fact that 'The Secretary Of State' appears to actually be falling in love with him, a rebellious 'Brooklynite' whose idea of fancy dress is adding a baseball cap to his windbreaker. As Fred discovers he can make Charlotte happy, his own personal take on what happiness is evolves. Fred recognizes that Charlotte’s a really great leader, so it becomes fulfilling for him to learn to support her in that. It gives him a chance to step back from his own ego and realize it doesn’t always have to be about him and his stuff. He learns to take pleasure just in being there for someone else, which is completely new for him. Even as Charlotte changes Fred, Fred aims to help Charlotte change the world. Having never quite recovered from the full force of her youthful idealism when she was his babysitter, he can’t help but remind her of just how spirited and uncompromising she was back then. Fred is able to re-spark the feelings that made Charlotte go into politics in the first place. He reminds her of all these strong ideals that got watered down over the years. Fred has always been an advocate for sticking to your guns and doing what you think is right. He can be entirely overzealous in that when it comes to his own life, but Charlotte takes it to heart in her own pragmatic way. Charlotte has always been driven, even as a kid, and she has always wanted to do big things and change big things in the world. When we first meet her in the film, it seems that everything is working out exactly the way that she’s always wanted, but she has paid a price. She has lost a little of what really mattered to her in order to succeed. that’s why Fred is so important to her. He wakes her up to all those things she used to believe in, really still believes in! If Fred Flarsky has never quite had the impact he hoped for in the world, or even in Brooklyn, Charlotte Field has reached the most rarified heights of international achievement and now has a chance, no matter how slim, to lead the entire nation with her vision. She’s done it all, and she’s hugely skilled at keeping it all under control, though perhaps just a little too skilled, which might be why she can’t get her childhood neighbor Flarsky out of her mind from the minute he literally tumbles back into her life. Charlotte is very much of this time and she’s in a very conflicted place that a lot of women have to deal with; juggling work, ideals and personal life. That's why you ultimately root so hard for her and Fred, because nothing is really easy for them and they've to make some really tough personal decisions. Surrounding Fred and Charlotte is a cast of comical characters from their disparate worlds. They include Fred’s life-long best friend Lance (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), who has never let him down no matter his misadventures. From the minute Fred re-encounters Charlotte, Lance is there, convincing him he’s good enough to pursue the impossible. Lance is a tech entrepreneur, a self-made man, who's super enthusiastic about everything, and he’s aggressively enthusiastic about supporting Fred. Lance is always in Fred’s corner. Lance believes that you've to love yourself first and then you need to step up and do something about it. He believes that if Fred proves to himself he’s worthy of Charlotte Field’s love, he’ll realize the kind of potential that has always been in him from the beginning. Behind Charlotte stands a loyal staff, and no one is more devoted to her than her rabidly meticulous 'Chief Of Staff', Maggie (June Diane Raphael), whose job is to solve every problem long before one arises. Naturally, Maggie’s consummate skills sniff out Fred Flarsky as an issue from the second Charlotte decides to hire him. She nails both the rivalry with Fred and the camaraderie with Charlotte that are so key to the comedy. The character is based not only on a real-life political 'Chief Of Staff, but on the coterie of Hollywood assistants, running people’s lives like a manager runs a company. There's a certain kind of energy to 'The Gatekeeper', a confidence and a power that comes from knowing nobody can get to this famous person without going through you. Maggie knows that while she might not be a public person, she’s crucial to 'The Secretary Of State’s' success, and she loves that. As 'The Gatekeeper', Maggie is staunchly opposed to Flarsky, first as a speechwriter but even more so as Charlotte’s prospective relationship, which is not at all in Maggie’s vision of Charlotte’s future. Why Charlotte hires Flarsky, and why he stays on the campaign, is a total mystery to Maggie. But even if she doesn’t understand it, she has to try to keep it from imploding Charlotte’s future. Working closely with Maggie is Tom (Ravi Patel), Charlotte’s 'body man', that indefinable 'Washington D.C.' job that's part valet, part emotional support, part social buffer. It’s not an easy job, though. When you’re body man, problems come at you pretty hard. You've to try to anticipate what's needed long before it's needed. So Tom is just an incredible grinder who never stops. Charlotte’s boss is no less than 'The President Of The United States', even if President Chambers (Bob Odenkirk) is in way over his head as commander-in-chief and knows it. A one-time actor who played a popular 'TV President' before he was elected, his main hope for his 'Presidency' is to parlay it into his true ambition; the big move to motion pictures. Chambers is a total airhead and a goofball, but he looks the part of President so that’s how he got elected. Charlotte takes Chambers by surprise when she starts dominating the news cycle. He hasn’t really paid close attention to what a smart cookie Charlotte is. She’s way smarter than he's but he doesn’t really notice. It's about a guy who, not unlike himself at that time, has become cynical about everything from politics to love, because none of it seemed to be working very well. What if such a guy fell in love with a woman so full of vigor, power and light, he has to adjust his own view of the world just to have the most remote shot with her? Fred Flarsky, an unapologetically opinionated, gonzo-style journalist still trying to make his mark in an age of corporate media. Flarsky is a guy who's creeping up on middle age, whose career as a journalist is on the verge of dying and he’s adrift in a lot of ways. That in turn led to the creation of Charlotte Field, the flame Fred’s been unable to put out since boyhood; his utterly unattainable babysitter, who from the second he met her inspired him, and seemed light years out of reach. Unsurprisingly to Flarsky, the wondrous Charlotte went on to become one of the most impressive and influential women in the world, while he’s been muckraking for the local 'Brooklyn Advocate'. When they run into each other after all these years, just as Flarsky has lost his job in a last stand against a corporate takeover, Flarsky has no illusions. Instead, it's Charlotte whose fascination is sparked by this refreshingly genuine blast from her past, leading her to give Flarsky a trial run at being her speechwriter. At first glance, Charlotte’s intercontinental sophistication couldn’t be a wilder clash with Flarsky’s klutziness and brash outspokenness. Charlotte is powerful, glamorous and everything Flarsky isn’t. Flarsky would never assume he could be with a woman like her. Yet there are places they connect from the start. Flarsky has a very strong sense of morality, even if he’s self-sabotaging. Charlotte also has very strong principles, even if she’s pragmatic and careful about them, knowing how the game has to be played. Part of the fun of their relationship is that's it gets going, Fred starts to get more comfortable with being cared about and Charlotte loosens up a lot, to the point of walking up to the edge of getting herself in trouble. As Charlotte starts rising in the polls, they've to contend with the consequences of their growing bond. With Charlotte enjoying a media frenzy over her link to 'The Canadian Prime Minister, she tries to keep their fling a secret, but realizes that can’t go on forever with the media glare. You can get away with a lot more subversiveness and outrageousness when you ground comedy in a believable thing. When you see Fred fall down a flight of stars in the hilarious way only he can, you also see him reconnecting with his childhood crush and coming to terms with who he has become. At the heart of this laugh-out-loud comedy about an epic romantic mismatch is a charming fairy-tale premise for our times. Charlotte Field is a bold, brilliant woman about to run for leader of the world. Fred Flarsky is a renegade Brooklyn journalist who can barely run his life. Can they really find happiness together? It’s an outlandish long shot, but then again, that’s one thing Charlotte and Fred share in common. Aside from the awkward fact that Charlotte was once Fred’s dazzling, much-desired babysitter, the two share a love for flying in the face of the odds. Now, they're both about to go for their most impossible dreams in a big way. Charlotte is aiming at nothing less than the future of the nation. And Fred? When Charlotte unexpectedly gives him a job as a novice speechwriter, he only hopes for a little time with her, no matter how incompatible they appear to be by every conceivable metric of power, success and appeal. A woman who has taken empowerment to the next level, Charlotte has no need and definitely no timenfor a relationship, and yet’s she’s drawn to the spark she spies all these years later in Fred. But to their surprise, they make for a successful team. And to their total mutual shock, no matter how much the two of them together makes absolutely no sense, as Charlotte starts soaring the polls, their relationship starts heating up behind the scenes. For someone like Fred, dating Charlotte is almost like dating a princess. Fred and Charlotte ricochet off one another as two aspirational people pushing the edges of their comfort zones in love, work and around the globe. At first, the story just has fun with them figuring out how to sneak around having this secret relationship. But ultimately, they've to figure out how important is this thing, really? Are they willing to risk Charlotte’s election chances or to risk even bigger things in terms of her having a lasting impact on the world? We've to see Charlotte's character as an incredible opportunity to explore not only a woman of high achievement in the political world, but also what a woman comes up against when she’s trying to be the best version of herself. What are the compromises she makes and won’t make? Charlotte’s journey really speaks to anyone trying to stay true to the things that mattered to you when you're young. That’s what Fred and Charlotte ultimately bring out in each other. There's a kind of 'Beauty And The Beast' element to Fred and Charlotte that had lots of comic potential. You've a woman who's trying to figure out how to be all things to all people, and then you've Fred who can’t seem to get out of his own way. While the backdrop of the film reflects the world of politics as we know it today, contentious, cutthroat, celebrity-driven, media-saturated. "Long Shot" is the rare modern comedy that jets around the world’s hot spots, moving from New York and 'Washington D.C.' to France, Sweden, Argentina, Japan and 'The Philippines', and from formal dinners of state to explosive 'Coup D’états'. The story has scope and scale that’s not only a lot of fun for a comedy but also separates it from other movies. It's also a shot at giving new life to the kind of sweetly emotional comedies that first made us fall in love with the movies; blending in '21st Century' sensibility and relevance. The idea of stretching a political comedy into the global sphere, presents an exhilarating challenge. In America, politicians are our version of royalty. So it’s a story that taps into a kind of grand fantasy fulfillment but at the same time it’s as down-to-earth, irreverent and hilarious as any thing we’ve done. The political world is a fun and timely backdrop. The emotional through-line of Charlotte and Fred is always the priority. But having a story that moves around the world and among powerful people, it feels like a chance to do something different with the comedy. From the performances to the look to the music, that entirely unlikely, but ever deepening, common ground is always the linchpin of the movie. The result is both a sweet and raucously funny ride through a contemporary reality, one that constantly asks us to compromise while tantalizing us with chances to seize the day.

(Release Info London schedule; May 12th, 2019, Electric Cinéma, Portobello, 191 Portobello Road, Notting Hill, London W11 2ED, 10:00 AM) "Sunset" 1913, Budapest, in the heart of Europe. The young Irisz Leiter (Juli Jacob) arrives in 'The Hungarian' capital with high hopes to work as a milliner at the legendary hat store that belonged to her late parents. She's nonetheless sent away by the new owner, Oszkár Brill (Vlad Ivanov). While preparations are under way at 'The Leiter' hat store, to host guests of uttermost importance, a man abruptly comes to Irisz, looking for a certain Kálmán Leiter (Urs Rechn). Refusing to leave the city, the young woman follows Kálmán’s tracks, her only link to a lost past. Her quest brings her through the dark streets of Budapest, where only the Leiter hat store shines, into the turmoil of a civilization on the eve of it's downfall. The monarchy of 'Austria-Hungary', in the very center of Europe, before the outbreak of 'World War I', is at the crossroads of all the accumulated European tensions, where coexist modernity and obsolescence on many levels. Politically, 'The Old Franz Joseph', 'Emperor Of Austria And King Of Hungary', rules from Vienna, over vast territories, a dozen nations, many cultures and religions. All forms of vigorous political and ideological aspirations that have spread during 'The 19th Century' are present or rampant, sometimes mixed; socialism, anarchism, nationalism. Modern antisemitism reaches it's maturity in Vienna. New scientifc approaches blossom, the first forms of psychological studies and psychoanalysis thrive, whereas many pseudo-scientifc and intellectual groups, cult-like movements, occult sects following illuminated leaders seem to crave for a special place in society, or on the edge of society. Thus, many fundamentally marginal, albeit enthusiastic movements co-exist in 'Austria-Hungary', where all art forms, including architecture, literature and motion pictures, fourish. The identity crisis resulting from the fragmentation of aspirations and the decay of the central royal order, coupled with a disenchantment of the world and a crisis of masculinity, give rise to a vibrating world that could lead to ecstatic prosperity or to downfall. In a way, beyond the love for technology within society and its boundless optimism, there's a deep malaise; a foating sentiment that something ominous, possibly apocalyptic is about to happen. This is the age of an almost biblical expectation. This society, whose codes and sophistication are embodied by the way people dress and behave; the hats they design and wear, preserves a facade of tranquility. But under the veneer of civilization, many forces cannot be controlled. They're about to take all the people, unsuspecting and believing in progress, into a quagmire and destruction of hitherto unseen, industrial proportions. This film is about a woman, alone, lost in her world, a world she tries but ultimately fails to understand. Probably under the infuence of a certain literary and cinematographic tradition of 'Central Europe'. It's about a main character that's partly surrounded by mystery and whose actions the audience has to assess and re-assess continuously, even becoming at some point a figure of an unexpected dimension, like a strange 'Joan Of Arc' of 'Middle Europe'. Unlike "Son Of Saul,' which had a meticulous documentary-style approach, "Sunset" resembles a tale, a mystery in itself where the viewer is invited on this journey to find, along with the main character, a possible way through this maze of facades and layers. From the outset, this movie as a way to plunge the viewer into a personal labyrinth, along Irisz’s quest to find her brother and ultimately the meaning of the world she wants to discover. Behind every clue she seems to find, there exists contradictory information. Behind every layer, a new one is revealed and the main character herself might very well be unaware of the process taking place deep within her. Irisz is a character caught between light and darkness, beauty and menace, incapable of dealing with the grey zones. In this sense, "Sunset" is also a story of a girl, the blooming of a strange fower. "Sunset", from the outset, intended to follow from close range it's main character, Irisz, allowing a highly intimate approach in an unusual period movie, trying to break with the predictable codes of postcard-perceptions of times past. Hopefully, the viewer is submerged into an unknown world, where people speak diferent languages, sound is a cornerstone of a strategy of immersion, forcing the viewer to give up some defenses. "Sunset" is a film about a civilization at it's crossroads. In the heart of Europe, at the height of progress and technology, without being written in history, the personal story of a young woman becomes the refection of a process that's in itself, the birth of 'The 20th Century'. A century ago, from the height of it's zenith, Europe committed suicide. This suicide remains a mystery until this very day. It's, as if a civilization, at it's pinnacle, was already producing the poison that would bring it down. At the core of this movie lies this personal preoccupation. "Sunset" is set before 'World War I' in 'The Austro-Hungarian Empire', a seemingly prosperous, multi-national state of a dozen languages and many peoples, with it's blooming capitals Vienna and Budapest, the cultural center of the world. And yet, against this fowering backdrop is the reality of the hidden forces about to tear it apart. Our deep European roots have pushed us to wonder about the age we live in now and the ages of our forefathers, how thin the veneer of civilization can be, and what lies beyond. In our modern, post-nation state world, we seem to forget the deep dynamics of history, and in our boundless love for technology and science, we seem to forget how close to the brink of destruction they can bring us. We live in a world that's not that far from the one before 'The Great War' of 1914. A world utterly blind to the forces of destruction it feeds at it's core. We're not far from the processes that took place in 'The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy'. For us, history is now, and in 'Central Europe'. The film tries to find the junction between the story of an individual and the state of the world in which the heroine exists. Today’s filmmaking practice is to orient viewers and reassure them continuously, but always want to find new ways to present audiences with a subjective experience of uncertainty and fragility, the underlying current of our very human condition. As in "Son Of Saul', the film confronts the audience with a conventional period piece. We could achieve more by giving a glimpse of a world up close and not try to fully uncover it. The imagination of the viewer would do the rest. Movies, today, refuse to trust the audience. "Sunset" is in a manner that may seem strange to someone who fully embraces today’s filmmaking practices. The film wants to reconnect the audience with the adventurous essence of motion pictures. Less is more our visual approach relied on an organic spatial strategy thanks to an ever-moving camera. As we dive into the world of a seemingly naive and innocent character, hopefully, we discover everything with her in an organic way. A volatile subjective fow of information turns the story of a young girl into a darker tale of decay. In a cinematic world relying less and less on real sets, and more and more on computers and visual efects, the film takes a stance that cinema has everything to do with the magic of physics, optics and chemicals. It's a trick of perception, of light and darkness. Complicated, choreographed long scenes bring "Sunset" into the physical world, one that the audience can believe in. This film is a testimony to the love of cinema, almost a century after the hopefulness of "Sunrise" by Murnau, a movie to which we pay homage. It seems that we're again at the dawn of a new cinematic era, but one that's less passionate. We might be now, again, at crossroads, and the temptation could take us down a path on which the grammar of filmmaking is more unquestionable and rigid than ever, with an unconditional love for digital technologies and clear-cut dramaturgy, at the risk of losing the magic and the unrelenting inventiveness of cinema.

(Release Info London schedule; June 2nd, 2019, Picturehouse Central, London W1D, 7-14 Coventry Street, London, W1D 7DH, 18:45 PM) https://film.list.co.uk/listing/1278236-hail-satan/ "Hail Satan" Chronicling the extraordinary rise of one of the most colorful and controversial religious movements in 'American' history, "Hail Satan?" is an inspiring and entertaining new feature documentary from director Penny Lane. When media-savvy members of 'The Satanic Temple' organize a series of public actions designed to advocate for religious freedom and challenge corrupt authority, they prove that with little more than a clever idea, a mischievous sense of humor, and a few rebellious friends, you can speak truth to power in some truly profound ways. As charming and funny as it seems thought-provoking, "Hail Satan?" offers a timely look at a group of often misunderstood outsiders whose unwavering commitment to social and political justice has empowered thousands of people around the world. On the steps of 'The Historic State Capitol Building' in Tallahassee, Florida, a handful of citizens wearing hooded cloaks and polyester robes hold a rally in support of Governor Rick Scott’s proposed law to allow prayer in public schools. Chanting 'Hail Satan! Hail Rick Scott!' the group’s demonically costumed spokesman announces to a smattering of TV cameras that 'The Satanic Temple' fully embraces the prospective legislation. In truth, however, these media-savvy 'Satanists' are playfully championing religious pluralism while illustrating the hypocrisy of Scott’s actions. 'The First Amendment' prohibits the government from passing any laws respecting the establishment of religion, meaning it cannot promote one religion over another, so any legislation opening the door to religious activities in school would have to accept not only 'Christianity' but unpopular religions such as 'Satanism'. Despite the event’s awkwardness and low turnout, the publicity stunt makes national news and launches the recently formed 'Satanic Temple' onto the public stage. After a hilariously vulgar 'Pink Mass' to protest the notoriously homophobic 'Westboro Baptist Church' garners the group even more attention, 'The Satanic Temple' officially opens it's international headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts. There, less than a mile from the spot where more than a dozen innocent people were executed during the witch trials of the 1690s, 'The Temple’s' enigmatic co-founder, Lucien Greaves, plans the group’s next public action. Joining him as co-spokesperson is Detroit artist and activist Jex Blackmore, who views 'Satanism' as a way to directly confront injustice and corrupt authority throughout the world. After holding a controversial black mass ritual in Boston, infuriating thousands of 'Catholics' across the city, 'The Satanic Temple' sets it's sights on Oklahoma, where a monument to 'The Ten Commandments' has recently been erected on public grounds. Shining a spotlight on this blatant promotion of 'Christianity' by 'The Oklahoma Legislature', 'The Temple' petitions the state to add a seven-foot statue of the goat-headed deity 'Baphomet' alongside 'The Christian Marker'. When the legislature removes 'The Ten Commandments' monument rather than install a tribute to 'Satan' on government property, 'The Temple’s' clever challenge inspires hundreds of like-minded people from around the world to join their cause. Within three years, the group’s membership grows from three people to more than 100,000. But with their numbers swelling and dozens of new chapters forming in cities across the globe, increased threats of violence against 'Satanists' and disagreements within the group’s own ranks complicate 'The Temple’s' work. As a complex and costly legal battle erupts over a similar 'Ten Commandments' monument in Arkansas, Greaves, Blackmore, and their fellow 'Temple' members struggle to adjust to the movement’s explosive popularity while maintaining the integrity of their core beliefs. In August of last year, a statue of 'Baphomet', a goat-headed, winged creature, was placed alongside a monument depicting 'The Ten Commandments' at 'The Capitol Building' in America. A lighthearted protest by 'The Satanic Temple'; against religious intolerance and for the separation of church and state. 'The Temple' was co-founded by social activist Lucien Greaves and over the course of six years evolved from a small-scale media stunt into an internationally recognised religion with hundreds of thousands of devotees. At the same time, it's one of the most controversial religious movements in 'American' history, or is it really a religion? Or a sect? Performance art? What's 'The Satanic Temple' in fact? The film follows the preparations for 'The Baphomet Stunt', witnesses strange rituals and has candid discussions with charming members and former members of 'The Temple' in this entertaining documentary, which also tackles serious issues. The film follows the growth of 'The Satanic Temple', an organization that has thrust the religion of 'Satanism' into 'The American' political arena. Specifically, 'The Satanic Temple' has acted as an effective disrupter in cases of overt 'Christian' language, symbols, and ideology being accepted or sanctioned in official government proceedings. This film is about the relationship between occult rituals and an abiding curiosity about 'The American' political system. The complicated relationship between faith and politics in 'The United States' has always been fascinated. The film explores the controversial topic in a compelling way. In terms of the cross-section of politics and religion, it's a terrific subject for a documentary. It seems like brilliant performance art that's designed to promote religious pluralism in America. But our assumptions about 'Satanism' are incorrect. 'The Satanic Temple' members are not in fact 'Satanists'. They want to make a political point. The truth is, 'Satanism' didn’t mean what we think it means. Like most people, we grew up with the vague notion that 'Satanists' worshipped 'The Devil' and committed evil acts in the name of 'The Prince Of Darkness'. We assumed that 'Satanists' practiced animal sacrifices, at least pretended to murder babies, and things like that. All of which turned out to be completely false. So 'Satanism' is a great subject for a film because there are so many surprises right off the bat. One of the many surprises that "Hail Satan?" has in store for viewers is just how funny and engaging 'Satanists' are in their work. As the documentary makes clear, humor can be a potent antidote to anger, fear, and ignorance. 'The Satanic Temple' has a very important message, but they frame it in a way that’s captivating and quite entertaining. However, humor and satire are much more than convenient ways to ingratiate 'Satanists' to the skeptical public. When put to good use, humor has proved to be a powerful weapon in the battle 'Satanists' and others are waging regarding the concept of religious pluralism. At the core of 'Satanism' is the understanding that having a sense of humor, and embracing ambiguity, and even trolling people to an extent, doesn’t mean you don’t truly believe in the things you’re fighting for. Those fights often involve government officials who promote 'Christianity' despite 'The First Amendment’s' clear prohibition against favoring one religion over another. That ultimately provides an interesting context in which to explore the issue of religious freedom. Engaging in humorous activity creates a framework surrounding the issue of religious liberty in America and what that means to all of us. 'The Satanic Temple' become spiritually and emotionally fulfilling to it's members. 'The Tempel' helps a huge number of people who’ve feel like outsiders come together and form a community. To publicly declare yourself a 'Satanist' is to invite a great deal of hatred and persecution. For that reason, it’s not surprising that some of 'The Satanists' in the film chose not to have their faces shown. These people have families they’re trying to protect. Although they’re not a satirical group, there’s still a lot of humor involved in their work. It's a fascinating and misunderstood religion. 'The Satanic Temple' is thriving right now because they’ve built a community of shared ideals that are religious in nature, while separating the supernatural aspect from it. That’s clearly something that serves a need for many people. It’s really important that people feel inspired to engage in radical actions in their own lives, and "Hail Satan?" provides an impetus for that energy. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions. The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own. Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs. People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused. Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.

(Release Info London schedule; May 3rd, 2019, Curzon Mayfair, 38 Curzon St, Mayfair, London W1J 7TY, United Kingdom, 1:15pm) https://www.curzoncinemas.com/mayfair/film-info/tolkien "Tolkien" "Tolkien" explores the formative years of the renowned author’s life as he finds friendship, courage and inspiration among a fellow group of writers and artists at school. Their brotherhood strengthens as they grow up and weather love and loss together, including John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s (Nicholas Hoult) tumultuous courtship of his beloved Edith Ann Bratt (Lily Collins), until the outbreak of 'The First World War' which threatens to tear their fellowship apart. All of these experiences would later inspire Tolkien to write his famous 'Middle-Earth' novels.     In his formative time Tolkien was a student, young romantic and soldier, long before he published 'The Hobbit' in 1937. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3rd, 1892 in Bloemfontein, 'Orange Free State', South Africa to an English couple, banker Arthur Tolkien (Adam Darlington) and his wife Mabel (Jane Dixon-Rowland). When we first meet the young Tolkien (Jack Riley) in the film, he's three. He returns to England with his mother and younger brother Hilary (Guillermo Bedward) to visit family. Tragically, while they're gone, his father died of rheumatic fever in 'South Africa'. With no income of her own, Mabel and her boys are forced to live with her family in Birmingham. In 1896, Mabel, John Ronald and Hilary moved to the rural hamlet of 'Sarehole', a 'Milltown' near 'Worcestershire', in the pastoral fields of 'The West Midlands'. This area of tremendous natural beauty would later inspire 'The Hobbit’s Shire' and other villages in Tolkien’s writing. He also spent time at his Aunt Jane’s (Laura Donnelly) farm, 'Bag End', a name later used for the home of 'Bilbo Baggins'. Mabel home schooled John Ronald and Hilary, sharing her own love of languages, stories, plants and trees. Around 1901, Mabel moved the family to 'King’s Heath' in urban Birmingham, to a house adjacent to a railway. Tolkien soon becomes a scholarship student at 'King Edward’s School', a boy’s school founded by 'King Edward' in 1552 in 'Edgbaston', 'Birmingham'. In 1904, Mabel dies at the age of 36 from acute diabetes, two decades before insulin was invented. At 12 years old, teenage Tolkien (Harry Gilby) is left without parents. Mabel’s close friend and religious adviser, Father Francis Morgan (Colin Meaning), is assigned the role of guardian to the two young Tolkien brothers and would oversee their finances and education until adulthood. In 1911, Tolkien forms 'The Tea Club And Barrovian Society' with fellow students and close friends Robert Gilson (Patrick Gibson), Geoffrey Smith (Anthony Boyle) and Christopher Wiseman (Tom Glynn-Carney). Named in honor of 'Barrow’s', the store close to their school where they enjoyed tea, cake, books and highbrow debate, the club became a haven for each of them to explore their aspirations. Everything changes when he forms the secret society with his fellow students, youthful artists, outcasts and rebels who together hope to change the world. In them he discovers steadfast friendships that will buoy him through the dark times of war and give him the confidence to try to follow the star-crossed lover he's forbidden to see and inspires him to write epics no one else could have conjured. Tolkien meets Edith Bratt at 16, when he and his brother began living at a boarding house where she also resided. Also an orphan, 19-year-old Edith studies to be a concert pianist. Tolkien and Edith begin falling in love, but when Father Morgan sees Tolkien’s schoolwork slipping, he prohibits them from seeing one another until Tolkien turns 21, leaving Tolkien heartbroken. In October of 1911, Tolkien begins his studies at 'Exeter College', Oxford. He initially studies 'Classics' but switched to 'English Language And Literature' in 1913. On his 21st birthday, Tolkien writes to Edith and proposes, only to learn that she's already engaged, convinced she’d never hear from Tolkien again. In January of 1913, Tolkien and Edith meet at 'Cheltenham Station', where she agrees to marry him. In 1915, he graduates from 'Exeter' with first class honors. Tolkien enlists to serve in 'World War I' in 1915. He's posted to the trenches in June 1916 as part of 'The 74th Brigade, 25th Division' and finds himself in 'The Somme' in July of that year. After coming down with trench fever in the fall of 1916, he's evacuates back to England, where he later learns most of his battalion was completely wiped out in the ensuing battles. Two of Tolkien’s dear friends and 'TCBS members', Robert Gilson and Geoffrey Smith, were killed in the war. Following a long recovery and the birth of his first child with Edith, Tolkien takes his first civilian job working as an etymologist for 'The Oxford English Dictionary'. He then becomes the youngest professor ever hired by 'The University Of Leeds'. He returns to Oxford in 1925 as 'The Rawlinson And Bosworth Professor Of Anglo-Saxon'. In 1937, Tolkien publishes 'The Hobbit' to wide critical acclaim. In 1954 and 1955, he publishes the three volumes of 'The Lord Of The Rings', which would become one of the best-selling novels ever written, read by millions in nearly every language and an enduring influence on popular culture ever since. Tolkien and Edith have four children and their love endured for the rest of their lives. Edith died in 1971 at the age of 82. On her tombstone in 'Oxford Cemetery', Tolkien inscrites the name 'Lúthien', the name he gave the ravishing 'Elven' princess who sacrifices immortality for love in 'Middle-Earth'. Tolkien dies on September 2nd, 1973 at the age of 81. Inscribe on his tombstone under his name is 'Beren', the mortal for whom 'Lúthien' sacrificed so much.   Tolkien’s life begins far from the incomparable characters he forged in his famous novels. When the film opens with a feverish Tolkien roaming 'The Trenches Of The Somme' searching for a lost friend, you know right away this is not going to be a standard biopic. It starts in war but then it becomes the wonderful story of these beautiful friendships. "Tolkien" begins in a world of fire and ash so eerie, it could be straight out of a dark fantasy, but is in fact 'The French Battlefields Of 'World War I'. In the midst of the raging 'Battle Of The Somme', where so many promising young men will give their lives, Tolkien staggers through a maze of desolate, fog-shrouded trenches in a feverish haze, searching for a friend. It’s an apt starting point not only to dive into the film’s central theme of fellowship, but also because few events would have more impact on Tolkien than the unthinkably vast human destruction and personal losses of 'World War I'. The so-called 'Great War' is the world’s shattering introduction to industrial warfare, rife with many new kinds of explosive, rapid-fire and chemical weaponry capable of causing mass casualties the likes of which have never before been seen in history. Some 10 million soldiers, including a staggering 700,000 British armed forces, would lose their lives in the war and Tolkien himself expressed doubts in his letters that he would survive to come home to Edith. Yet, even in the hellscape of 'The Trenches', Tolkien’s imagination is at work, as he begins writing notes by candlelight on some of the characters who would become the lifeblood of the legends he would create. Tolkien is always clear that the exact events of 'The Lord Of The Rings' saga, as written, are not meant to correlate to specific events in either world war. But his experiences in the first war, and the loss of his close friends, impacted him greatly. Death is so close to Tolkien in that time. Much as he loves the soaring legends of 'The Hobbit' and The Lord Of The Rings', he's equally moved by the deeply human story of how Tolkien comes of age against the odds, and how he's spurred to write lasting stories in part by a determination to live and create to the fullest. In those moments imagination often takes over and you see into the darker catacombs of your mind. Seeing evil and darkness is the emotion he takes from war. The realism of the environment also helps to evoke the urgency of Tolkien hoping against hope to reunite with his dear friends. By pulling back the curtain on Tolkien’s early life, you find a story that delves into where art and stories come from. For Tolkien, friendship is one of the most important things in the world and here you see why that becomes so central to his life and works. By age 12, John and his brother Hilary are penniless orphans, but Tolkien defied those circumstances at every turn. It soon becomes clear he has exceptional gifts, including a rare genius for inventing languages, mapping out mythology and concocting imaginary creatures in words and drawings. That genius provided him with the opportunity to enroll in the prestigious 'King Edward’s School' in Birmingham, and where his blossoming fantasy life really began to soar, thanks to the very best kind of encouragement; a circle of faithful friends who kept daring him to go further and always had his back. In 1911, Tolkien joined up with Robert Gilson, Christopher Wiseman and Geoffrey Smith to create a secret club playfully dubbed 'The Tea Club And Barrovian Society', 'TCBS' for short, to trade barbs, share ideas, debate everything going in the world, unleash their inner poets and support one another in their exuberant aspiration to lead lives of courage, creativity and meaning. It's really revelatory to discover that Tolkien is part of this foursome of friends who really are a fellowship. They all enlisted into 'The Great War' together, so you truly have this alliance of young men who've to confront tremendous peril, which is a theme that became so close to Tolkien’s heart. They're the kind of friends able to push each other and encourage each other to go further. And at that time, Tolkien didn’t have anyone else like that.  It's about gaining the trust of each of these young men, and also encouraging them to trust each other. You've to really feel that they not only get to know each other on that level that only best friends do but that they believe in each other. Each armed with a sharp wit and a desire to make a mark on the world, 'The TCBS' will give each of these outcasts a place to express who they really are. These four young men make this bold declaration that they’re going to change the world through art, and that mark on him will last forever. From Tolkien’s arrival at 'King Edward’s School' to his near demise fighting for 'The British' in 'The Battle Of The Somme' during 'World War I', which remains one of the bloodiest conflicts in British military history, to the start of his life with Edith Bratt, who would become his hard-won muse,the film sharps his storytelling savvy as part of a clandestine society of teen misfits. Spanning from childhood dreams to a surreal vision of Tolkien at war, it also has an epic sensibility Tolkien himself might have recognized. Even as Tolkien finds companionship, solidarity and adventure with 'The TCBS', he's also finding unexpected common ground with a resident at Mrs. Faulkner’s (Pam Ferris) boarding house, Edith Ann Bratt, a rising young talent studying to become a concert pianist. Three years older than Tolkien, at first, she's just an intriguing housemate. But in 1909, they fell in love, which led Tolkien on one of his first and greatest quests. It's almost a 'Shakespearean' love story between Tolkien and fellow orphan Edith Bratt. After a fiery courtship based on their mutual love of art and mischief, their link is nearly severed when Tolkien’s guardian, Father Francis Morgan, banned the love-struck pair from so much as making eye contact until Tolkien is 21. Father Francis Morgan decides Edith is spinning Tolkien’s head away from his schoolwork, he banns them from dating. Things might well have ended there, but Tolkien refused to let go of his dream. Here's a tremendous romance between two lost souls who are torn apart just when they really needed each other, only to find each other again and make it work. Tolkien and Edith has such a deep love and a connection that it could never be broken. They're each other’s escape but also each other’s reality. The charismatic showman of 'The TCBS' is Robert Gilson, who aspires to become a painter. Gilson also happens to be the son of the school headmaster, which brings him both power and despair, given that the glaring truth is that his iron-gloved father demands more of Robert than any other boy. Robert definitely has that feeling that there's a much larger world to explore. He’s actually quietly struggling with his confidence. He’s constantly trying to live up to his father’s extremely high expectations, so he puts on this strong persona to cover up his doubts underneath. The sensitive soul of 'The TCBS' is found in Geoffrey Smith, a precociously talented poet and developing playwright whose family refuses to sanction his love of writing. Geoffrey’s own feelings of isolation allow him to sense loneliness and that’s why he engages with Tolkien, he knows that friendship can be a real beacon of light in the darkness. Smith may not be an orphan like Tolkien, but his poetry has estranged him from his family. Only later will Geoffrey’s mother (Genevieve O’Reilly) come to glimpse the depth of his promise. His relationship with his mother is so difficult. There’s love there but they don’t know how to speak to one another. It really moves to learn that Tolkien went to such great lengths to publish Geoffrey’s poetry after the war. The most candid member of 'The TCBS' is the wisecracking Christopher Wiseman, who's already showing tremendous promise as a classical composer. Wiseman may have no filter when it comes to offering his opinions, but underneath is a young man confronted with his own inner turmoil. Christopher is the one who just says what he thinks and doesn’t consider the consequences. That gets him into a bit of trouble. But he also believes that 'The TCBS' brings out the best in him. Wiseman and Tolkien develop a charged, competitive friendship full of lacerating wit and honesty. He’s already a published composer so that gets under Tolkien’s skin a bit. Christopher always pushes just a little bit too far, and that brings out the anger and the fear that Tolkien has to confront. The sparring that goes on between Tolkien and Christopher actually builds a strong respect between the two of them. Father Francis Morgan is the priest who becomes Tolkien’s guardian after his mother’s death. He's quite a fascinating character who becomes Mabel Tolkien’s friend and also her mentor when she converted to 'Catholicism'. Most importantly, he encourages his education, realising that for a boy without resources, or a family behind him, going to university is extremely important. Father Morgan though nearly blocks Tolkien from what will become one of the biggest influence on his life and work, his love for Edith. Morgan is rather alarmed at seeing a very young Tolkien getting distracted by this older woman, so he feels it his duty to intervene. Fortunately, later he realises that Edith is a wonderful person and he admits as much to Tolkien, telling him you're right to pursue her. Which for a priest of that time, is quite big of him really. How do you express the mind of a genius visually? The film dugs deep into Tolkien’s stories and his illustrations, searching for how his mind operated, for ways to show how he saw the world. The film wants those who love the books to be able to trace everything you see in the film forward into Tolkien’s work, but also for that to be so subtle that the story is equally compelling without knowing a thing about 'Middle-Earth'. Like a spark to the global imagination, J.R.R. Tolkien’s book 'The Hobbit' set off a wildfire, single-handedly dominating the fantasy adventure genre in the last century. 'The Tolkien Effect' echoes everywhere throughout literature, television and movies. In his never-before-seen worlds and tales, Tolkien’s realms of wizards, hobbits, dragons and mythical beings evoke the best parts of human nature; our love of quests, our willingness to sacrifice for others, our hopes for good to defeat evil and the strength we get from true camaraderie. Now, with "Tolkien" comes a story of how the teenage Tolkien transformed from a lonely orphan into one of the great storytellers of all time, a story that's itself an enchanting tale lit with the power of imagination, the bonds of fellowship and the forging of purpose in the fires of love and war. At the heart of "Tolkien" is the way that the material world all around us, from an ancient, gnarled tree to a pastoral farmhouse to the belief in the face of a friend or lover, can spark the wildest, most evocative imaginings. The camera always moves with Tolkien and his emotions. So if Tolkien sits and is in peace, the camera sits. If he moves or he's in turmoil, the camera amplifies or embodies that feeling with movement. Not all of the locations allowed this, but it gives us a really close experience to the actors and the main character. The sets also have a sense of life to them, real but just a little dreamy, the way a blossoming writer might see the world. Though the film starts on the battlefield, it soon cuts to Tolkien’s childhood home in 'Sarehole', which is key for setting the tone of his childhood. 'Sarehole' is later the inspiration for 'The Shire', so that's really important. It’s a story with four different time periods and elements that range from war to fantasy. It’s the story of an orphaned boy finding fellowship, going to war and discovering the one woman he’ll love for eternity. At the same time, it's about how Tolkien, in his creative brilliance, might have been inspired to weave each of these real things, friendship, war and love, into his incredibly lively fantasy worlds. The idea that through each of these light and dark experiences, Tolkien gained the voice to create the stories we’re more passionate about than ever now.

After a culmination of 22 films and 10 years, Endgame promised to be one of the biggest films so far of the 21st century, if not, the entire film history. This film has been hyped to shit. One critic even comparing it to Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Whilst for me it doesn’t come close to that, Endgame is epic in its own rights, though not as jaw dropping amazing as it has been made out to be by the Marvel fanboys. The film takes place almost straight after Infinity War, when Thanos snapped his fingers and half the population, including our favourite superheros like Black Panther, Spider-Man and Dr. Strange dissolved into dust and disappeared. There were a lot of great things about Endgame, from a technical point of view, there are some really wonderful shots towards the last hour of the film. There is a lot of humour in this film, most notably from Chris Hemsworth and Paul Rudd, who steal the show for me. Their performances were hilarious and were the comedy relief. Tom Holland as Spider-Man has probably been Marvel’s greatest addition to this franchise in terms of how it has developed RDJ’s Iron Man character. Peter Parker provides RDJ with a weakness, love. It’s allowed his character to grow from an arrogant billionaire, to an arrogant billionaire who cares about someone other than himself. I never really got that connection between him and Potts, but the father-son relationship that Endgame, Homecoming and Infinity War have shown, for me, have been it’s best attributes. There were some really awesome twists that happened, both shockingly brilliant, and also emotionally heart-breaking. I didn’t think a Marvel movie could do that, but Endgame certainly managed to pack multiple punches in story-telling. I do have some criticisms of the film. And not because it is Marvel and I do have Marvel fatigue, but because I think no movie can be perfect, no matter how much I love them. Despite the length of the movie (technically its only 2 hours and 45 minutes as 15 minutes is credits) not a considerable amount happens. If I was to write the plot synopsis, it would look quite short. Certainly the first 2 hours have a slow build up, it doesn’t drag but this film certainly makes nostalgia play a key role to the point where it lingers too long in Marvel’s history, and not in it’s present. It was still an enjoyable 2 hours. The next 45 minutes go quite quick and seem rushed. The battle sequences aren’t brilliant, in this film I was hoping for some really spectacular scenes but I was left disappointed. Still good and exciting, but nothing new or bold. There were some twists that were obvious, I’m still not entirely sure why the audience was so shocked at one key moment, but it’s build up didn’t really work for me as it seemed so obvious.  4/5 On the whole, I don’t think Marvel could have done much more to please it’s fans. I do think that if you love Marvel, you’ll love this. I certainly liked it. I do however think that right now, fans are wearing rose tinted glasses, when they’re taken off I think they might have expected more from Endgame. I think it could have done more.

(Release Info London schedule; June 5th, 2019, Odeon Luxe, 22-24 Leicester Square, London WC2H 7LQ, United Kingdom, 11:45 AM, 18:00 PM) https://mobi.odeon.co.uk/films/x_men_dark_phoenix/17691/# "X-Men: Dark Phönix" From director Simon Kinberg comes the most radical 'X-Men' film ever made. "X-Men: Dark Phönix" tells the iconic story of Jean Grey’s (Sophie Turner) transformation from gifted mutant into the most powerful force in the universe. The culmination of a superhero saga nearly two decades in the making, the spectacular new blockbuster is part science-fiction thriller, part character-driven drama, posing intriguing questions about identity and destiny. During a life-threatening mission to outer space, Jean Grey is nearly killed when she absorbs a cosmic entity that leaves her with powers far beyond anything she or any other mutant has ever possessed. Once she returns home to Earth, she struggles with these near-godlike abilities, but the force inside her is too overwhelming to contain. Spiraling out of control, Jean hurts the ones she loves most. Her actions tear 'The X-Men' apart, and the heroes find themselves deeply compromised at a time when they must face their most dangerous enemy yet; one of their own. The emotional story of a divided hero, a divided family and a divided world. When "X-Men: Dark Phönix" opens, it’s 1992. "The X-Men", now widely beloved superheroes who enjoy celebrity status, are called upon by 'The U.S. Government' to save imperiled astronauts whose mission has gone horribly wrong. Over the objections of Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), the team climbs into 'The X-Jet' and heads out on a life-threatening rescue mission. Among the stars, a mysterious cosmic entity targets Jean Grey, overwhelming her body and, at first, appearing to claim her life. When she does awaken, Jean initially feels strong, recharged. But back on Earth, she begins to realize that she’s attained powers beyond her understanding, or her control. As she uncovers long-held secrets about her past, truths kept from her by Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), she becomes increasingly destructive, lashing out at those closest to her in paroxysms of anger and despair. What happens with Jean when she comes back from space is that she has a power she can’t control inside of her, and it’s escalating and intensifying everything inside Jean, which can unleash or liberate aspects of her personality. That’s power, emotion and rage, and that’s passion. Desperate to help Jean regain her equilibrium, Raven reaches out to her as a mentor and friend. But Jean turns her fury on Raven, killing her. That shocking event rips apart 'The X-Men'; some of the mutants insist that they must go to any lengths to save their friend, while others believe they need to stop her before any more lives are lost. At it's core, this is a tale of a woman struggling with her personal demons, and only the love of her family, 'The X-Men', can save her soul, and the world. The thing about the Jean Grey's story is that she’s not a villain, but she’s not a superhero who’s going to save the world and everything’s fine. She’s one of the few characters that’s very tormented and broken. There’s a realism to her, it’s painful and her experiences remind you of mental illness. It’s not too fantastical for people to comprehend. There’s no black or white with her, it’s a very gray area. It’s a struggle that’s very true to a lot of people and that’s why people love her. This film is a much more thorough investigation and much truer to Jean as a character. This feels very different, with a different tone and a different sense of cinematic style that's appropriately suited to the story. The character essentially becomes schizophrenic, starts to lose her identity and ultimately it coalesces into two identities, which is Jean, who’s getting smaller and weaker, and 'Phoenix', who’s becoming stronger and stronger. Charles Xavier is the leader of 'The X-Men' and the inadvertent catalyst behind Jean’s transformation. When the film opens, Charles is relishing his privileged status as the leader of the mutants; something he enjoys, Raven rightly points out, even though he’s rarely the one on the frontlines. He’s a guy who lives in a mansion, who doesn’t leave that mansion and throws a whole lot of other people in harm’s way, many of them who are quite young. The film examines that and problematize that. There’s an ego attached to that and a very patriarchal, paternalistic quality to it. We live in an age now where that doesn’t go without notice, and it has gone without notice for decades of the comic book and for now two decades of the movies. Charles in this movie, he starts to believe his own hype. He’s on the cover of 'Time Magazine'. He's very much the public face of 'The X-Men', he’s congratulated for all their work. He’s the guy on the red carpets, shaking hands with presidents. He's very much like a father who loves his children and believes that they're capable of anything. That all sounds positive, but the downside of it's that, if they don’t achieve everything, if they fall short of the very lofty expectations the world and Charles has put on his team, he feels that somehow reflects badly on him. When Charles ignores Raven’s misgivings about the interstellar rescue mission and sends the team into space, Jean’s fate is sealed. What’s more, when she learns that Charles has erected barriers in her mind to protect her from painful truths about her past, she feels deeply betrayed, further fueling her violent leanings. She comes back to Earth with a nagging curiosity and desire to find these missing parts of her life that Charles has hidden from her. When she realizes what he’s done, there’s a sentiment of justified righteous anger there; instead of allowing her to process a difficult childhood, Charles disrespected her by locking her memories away. When that trauma reemerges, it galvanizes that dark power within her. Those events lead directly to the confrontation that result in Raven’s demise. Raven is the one who’s most willing to confront Charles and his belief system and peel away the veneer a little bit. Raven is the character who first seizes on that idea of his hubris, is the first to challenge him about it, and subsequently, she’s the one who’s sacrificed. Her very alarms are part of what propel her forward to reach out to Jean and that's part of what leads to her death. Losing Raven devastates Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult), who turns against his mentor, Charles, and is determined to seek revenge. He’s lost his soulmate. That takes Hank to a very different place than we’ve ever seen him in any of the other movies. He’s filled with this rage and desire for revenge to kill Jean for what she did. It's crucial to telling 'The Dark Phönix' story properly and to set up the conflict between Charles and Hank and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender). Erik and Hank had both had romantic relationships with Raven. For Charles, she's like a sister to him. Killing her has the greatest impact emotionally on the most characters. What that does for the audience is indicate that anything can happen. Nobody is safe. Smith (Jessica Chastain), an alien in human disguise who covets the force that has amplified Jean’s already extraordinary abilities, soon takes Jean under her wing, becoming a very different sort of mentor than either Raven or Charles ever were. She encourages Jean to act on her dark impulses, to subjugate the lesser beings around her. The character’s end goal? To rid the planet of human life, paving the way for her alien race to inhabit Earth as their new home. She’s 1,000 times smarter than anyone on this planet. She comes to the planet, explores mankind, realizes that, in her mind, they’re bacteria. They’re a cancer. Not only are they a harm to themselves, they’re a harm to the planet. They consume everything with greed. She realizes she needs to eliminate the bacteria. She doesn’t see it as malicious. It’s not something she does based on revenge. It’s something she does for the good, in her mind, of all. It's finally time for an' X-Men' movie to have a female lead. After nearly 20 years, "X-Men: Dark Phönix" is squarely focused on the journey of Jean Grey and the women who surround her including Raven and Smith, a villainous new presence who encourages Jean to abandon her humanity and give in to her darkest urges. Jean goes back to the modest street to solve a mystery about her past, but the trip becomes the site of an explosive standoff between Jean and 'The X-Men', resulting in Raven’s untimely death. One of the favorite sets is Jean’s neighborhood. It’s six small houses with a little bend at the end and a rickety bridge. Each house has a different identity created for the people that live in it; there’s the fisherman, the truck driver, the angry married couple. The neighborhood street is constructed entirely from the ground up. The film creates a neighborhood that's very lower-middle class. There's a bridge to show that people drive by, but they don’t stop there. At the other end of it, there's a field of electrical devices with pylons and towers and wires. All the houses are prebuilt in the shop, and the film assembles them on site. 'The Community' is about an hour outside of downtown Montreal. It’s a refuge for mutants who don’t have anywhere else to go. It has a classic commune vibe; people living off the grid, being self-sufficient. That tranquility is interrupted when Jean arrives, seeking Erik’s counsel on how best to manage her newly acquired powers in the wake of Raven’s death. 'The Dark Phoenix' side of her is enjoying hurting people, enjoying this violence, and she thinks that Erik might feel some kinship to that. She comes to seek permission of a sort. But of course, Erik’s history is a lot different. He partakes in violence because of a vengefulness that’s in him. It’s not that he gets much satisfaction out of it. When the authorities trace Jean to 'Genosha', the refuge becomes the site of a battle of wills between Erik and Jean, and Erik is stunned to see the full range of Jean’s abilities. The sequence includes what's essentially a psychic tug of war over a military helicopter, much of which is staged practically. 'The Phoenix' effect shows up in many different forms and many different levels of intensity. The first little hints of 'The Phoenix' effect are quite subtle. Toward the end of the film, when 'The Phoenix' effect is in full force, it’s much, much bigger. It affects Jean's skin, it affects her eyes, it affects really all aspects of her emotions. It also affects the air around her quite considerably. There are shock wave-type components. There are particle components. There are smoke and fire and flames, almost an internal lava effect. There are a lot of pieces to it that come together to create 'The Final Phoenix' effect. But it’s all tied with Jean’s emotion. As 'The X-Men' struggle to come to terms with what Jean’s done, with what she’s become, allegiances are fractured and new alliances formed. But in the end, to save both Jean Gray and the galaxy, 'The X-Men' must find a way to set aside their differences and work together for a common cause. "Dark Phönix" asks profound, primal questions; if you love someone, at what point do you let them go? Or do you hold onto them forever, at all costs, even at your own peril? There's something about the splitting apart, then the coming back together, of the family of 'The X-Men' that hopefully offers an optimistic message about our ability to survive and unify through the most extraordinary and shattering challenges. Whether it’s the surrogate families that we build in our lives or the real families we've in our lives, it’s the coming together that makes us strong. The goal is always to create a bolder, edgier, more intense, more emotional 'X-Men' film, one that's far more character-driven and deeply human than any that had come before. What do you do when the person you love becomes the world’s greatest threat? It’s the question at the heart of one of the most enduring storylines in the decades-long history of 'The X-Men' comic books, 'The Dark Phoenix' saga. Written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by John Byrne in 1980, the story in many ways represents the ultimate 'X-Men' tale. Jean Grey is transformed into a force that not even her mutant family can comprehend. She becomes an outsider among outsiders, a being beyond the reach of even those closest to her. 'The Dark Phoenix' saga is one of the most beloved of 'The X-Men' series in it's long lineage, primarily because it’s not a story where you've heroes and villains, black and white. It's important to tell 'The Dark Phoenix' saga on the big screen in a way that truly do justice to it's distinguished legacy. The 2006 film included aspects of 'The Dark Phoenix' story, but more than 10 years on, the time is right for a darker, grittier, much more faithful adaptation that serves as a capstone to nearly two decades of superhero filmmaking. 2016’s "X-Men: Apocalypse" told a disaster story writ large with elaborate set pieces and eye-popping special effects, which left less time for exploring the ever-evolving relationships among the mutants. By that point, 'The X-Men Franchise' has progressed to a place where the series could easily accommodate something less stylized and more daring; comic book movies as a genre also has proved time and again that they could serve up substantive themes and compelling character work inside mass entertainments. Who are we? Are we simply what others want us to be? Are we destined to a fate beyond our control? Or can we evolve, become something more? This movie’s very different from the previous 'X-Men' movies. The source material is different from the other 'X-Men' comics that we’ve drawn upon in the past. It’s more psychologically complex and emotionally volatile. The emotions it gets into are rawer than a lot of the other 'X-Men' comics. What's most intriguing and why this story has spoken to so many people is that on a very human level, it’s about someone you love starting to unravel psychologically. What happens when people lose themselves in real life is that their loved ones hold on and want to help or save them. Sometimes you get dragged down with them and there are others who, at a certain point, give up on them. This movie is about that question of, when do you let go and give up on someone you love. "Dark Phönix" crafts an adventure that would offer a much more nuanced depiction of good and evil appropriate to our turbulent times. The film emphasizes the duality that can exist within the same person, the darkness and the light. Just as "X-Men: Dark Phönix" is thematically and tonally different from all the previous 'X-Men' films, the look of the movie is equally distinct. After almost twenty years of making a certain style of 'X-Men' film, it's time for a change. This 'X-Men' movie feels more real, more relatable hopefully to audiences. The film is darker, not as colorful as the previous films. To that end, the film includes a great deal of handheld camerawork, a first for any installment in 'The X-franchise'. In previous 'X-Men' movies; and this is true for a fair amount of large-scale Hollywood movies and comic-book movies, they tend to use very smooth photography, crane moves and dolly moves, everything’s slick. Here, instead of the camera being still and the characters being the motion, the characters are moving, but the camera is also moving a little bit. The action is where the audience feels it most, but even in dialogue scenes, you’ll feel a bit of breath around the characters. We’ve gotten to a place where audiences are ready for a disruptive, radical story where a good guy goes bad, where a hero loses control and becomes destructive, even homicidal. Comics, and even comic book moves, tend to tread in good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. When the hero does something villainous or when a good guy does something bad, it’s shocking. You’re not sure what you’re rooting for. Right now, we’re living in a world that's a little upside-down politically and socially. Everything’s not as binary as it used to be. There’s not a lot of unity. Everybody feels like they’re splitting apart. A story about a character who's herself splitting apart, and as a result of that, is splitting apart the family of 'The X-Men', it feels very relevant.

(Release Info London schedule; July 12th, 2019, Picturehouse Central, Corner of Shaftesbury Avenue, Piccadilly Circus, London W1D 7DH, United Kingdom, 9:00 PM) https://walloh.com/movies/34557-stuber/ "Stuber" Stu (Kumail Nanjiani) is a chatty, mild-mannered, risk-averse 'Millennial' who works in a sporting goods store while moonlighting as an 'Uber Driver' trying to make enough money to finance a spin gym business to get with Becca, (Betty Gilpin), the girl of his dreams; a plan that’s about as likely to work as it sounds. He will do anything to save his five-star driver’s rating. Vic Manning (Dave Bautista) is a middle aged, old school, alpha detective. He’s divorced from his wife, married to his job, and neglectful of his parental duties to his grownup artist daughter, Nicole (Natalie Morales). Years of using his hulking body as a battering ram have taken it's toll, but Vic still pushes it to the limit. Allergic to both conversation and technology, Vic is quick to get angry and quick to pull the trigger, a combo that everyone loves in a cop! One day, leaving his 'Eye Doctor’s (Roger Payano) office after having 'Lasik Surgery', Vic receives a tip on the whereabouts of The Columbian Drug Dealer' Tedjo (Iko Uwais) who murdered his partner Sara Morris (Karen Gillan). Unfortunately, Vic wouldn’t be able to spot a whale if it's right in front of him. Even a white one. Eyes blurry and unable to drive himself, Vic calls for an 'Uber', and guess who answers. Can these two very different men share a 'Nissan Leaf' while hunting drug dealers across Los Angeles? It's 'The Old Couple' but with more exploration. For the film’s opening where Vic and his partner Sara are in hot pursuit of drug dealer Tedjo, the film is inspired by the tense, breathtaking action sequences that open the 'James Bond' films. The film opens with a massive sequence that would sort of set the tone that this is going to be a violent, fast-moving film with consequences. And audiences are in for quite a ride. The opening is originally conceived to be something where Vic jumps into a pool from four or five stories up on the outside of the hotel. You've one continuous shot of Vic making a decision to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible when he hears his partner is in peril. In the first 10 minutes of this movie you will know what you’re in store for. Or, you know, as grounded as an edge-of-your-seat run-and-gun car chase across Los Angeles can be. It's important that the average moviegoer can relate to the characters. We’re not going to try to pull any cheap punches with cheap jokes. We start with this buddy cop Vic, whose partner has been killed and he’s been seeking vengeance for years. Vic is a muscle-bound alpha who thinks feelings are for women and children ages three and under. He’s incredibly smart and knows exactly what he needs. He embodies the tough guy physique and can take a punch. He looks a little more surly, a little bit more disheveled. Vic is sort of the traditional, stoic, or angry action hero of the past. Once you’re four, it’s time to man up. And it just so happens the day he gets 'Lasik Surgery' is when he has an opportunity to catch the bad guy. So, not getting the official go ahead from his boss, he calls 'Uber' and Stu picks him up and the fun ensues. There’s nothing like humanizing a superhero by giving him blurred vision from 'Lasik Eye Surgery' which not only causes him this hilarious disorientation but also shows his age and vulnerability which paired with his size and strength is just amazing. Most of the film’s humor stems from the differences between Vic and Stu, two guys who couldn’t be more different. Stu is an 'Uber Driver'. He's a sensitive beta-male who relies on his empathy and wit. He cries at movies. And at TV shows. To be honest, he cries at everything. We’ve probably all experienced an 'Uber Driver' like Stu. He’s got all types of treats. He’s got gum, mints, little mini waters, all types of different charging devices.  And he's desperately seeking five stars from you. Stu and his five-star ratings is a whole thing. Everybody has been in an 'Uber' and has had a gabby 'Uber Driver', and somebody who sort of rattles on and aims to please and that embodies Stu. Stu is sort of chasing other people’s dreams picking up extra 'Uber' shifts to try and finance the spin gym dream for this girl he pines for. He’s a hardworking guy. He’s a very amicable guy, but he hasn’t really found his passion or sort of who he's. We’re basically taking sort of an everyday character and dropping him into this gritty L.A. There’s a bit of wish fulfillment in terms of what a day in a life like that would be like if suddenly you took your average 'Uber Driver' and put him into a crime world and see if he would survive or how he would. There’s also the generation gap in that Stu is a 'Millennial' who lives on social media while Vic thinks ‘Snapchat’ is when a crackhead tries to bite your nose off during an interrogation. There’s this generational divide. You've Vic who has no idea how to use 'Uber', so we get to watch him stumble with the concept of it and he jumps right into the front seat and demands to go to a certain destination. Then you've Stu trying to explain this isn’t how the app works. The characters change so much throughout the course of the night where Stu learns to stand up for himself. He learns to fight. Vic learns to be a little bit more sensitive to others and to be a guy who sort of listens, and a guy who realizes he can do things himself. And he needs help, and he needs people around him and he needs support like we all do. Tedjo is a drug dealer who runs heroin all across 'The West Coast' and he doesn’t say much, which makes him almost more scary. His demeanor paired with his fighting skills makes for a psycho and really a bad guy. Nicole is definitely her father’s daughter. They bump heads a lot, and she clearly just wants her father to be present in her life, but the job has always come first. She’s strong-willed and has chosen to be an artist which couldn’t be farther from being in law enforcement. Nicole keeps trying for her dad to be a normal, cool dad but he’s a little out of touch and jagged around the edges. Becca is the flighty friend that Stu dreams of making his girlfriend. It’s one of those situations where you’re seeking love from someone who’s never going to give it back to you. She's fun. She's crazy. She's different. And that kind of energy is what Stu is drawn towards. Richie (Jimmy Tatro) is Stu’s boss. He's the manager of his father’s sporting goods store called 'Out Of The Box'. Not the nicest guy. He overcompensates for his insecurities by making a career out of belittling Stu. Captain McHenry (Mira Sorvino) is Vic’s boss. She’s worries about Vic because he’s kind of losing it after the death of his partner. This film is a driving movie, so we spend a lot of time in the car. In these big car chase sequences, Stu is in the car pretending to drive but the steering wheel’s not hooked up and there’s a pod on the roof of the car where someone else is driving. You’re sort of pretending while you've cars flying at you. It's definitely a rush to feel completely safe but still get to be in the wrong lane and have cars coming at you. The pod car is a small roll cage built on top with a driving pod. Imagine the cockpit of a 'Nascar' mounted to the roof of the car. It controls all the controls in the car. It’s all been wired so down in the car Stu behind the wheel has no control of the car. He can’t hit the brakes. He can’t hit the gas, anything. Nothing works for him so he has to act it all out. The rotisserie rig mounts on a car like a rotisserie chicken. It’s mounted on this big, steel structure that's chain driven with a big wheel. The car mounts on this bracket and then cameras are mounted to the car. So the film takes and literally spin the car 360 degrees over and over as if it’s rolling down a hill, which as you’ll see, is one of the escapades these guys endure. The two guys get 'T-Boned' in the 'Nissan Leaf' which launches them through a fence and off an embankment and the car flies off the embankment hits and rolls down this hill. And that’s what the technology allows you to do these days, which is exciting. To make sure the action feels real to audience members. It feels like a roller coaster. A lot of times action comedies are either very funny and maybe the action is an afterthought or it’s vice-versa and the action is really well done, but the comedy maybe suffers. This is not your typical studio action comedy. The script deals with interesting themes of masculinity where Vic would represent those modern themes of old school sort of 'Marlboro Man' type of masculinity and Stu represents much more of the woke new school of themes of masculinity. It's very interesting to explore those different perceptions of masculinity. Ultimately, these two wildly different characters develop a heartfelt bro-mance and each becomes the better man in the process as they realize that the other has something surprising to teach them about life. There’s a lot of conflict between the characters but they also find common ground. The dynamic really works because it’s two completely different kinds of guys that we all know, sort of forced to spend time together. And these two guys would never, ever, ever be friends, except in the situation where they’re sort of forced to work together, so you've sort of the one guy who’s the new millennial man kind of guy who’s very into talking about his feelings, and is ok with crying, and all that stuff. In addition to presenting a fish out of water situation, the film plays with the topical idea of what it means to be a man in today’s society. There are a lot of layers to this movie, but at the end of the day, the film just going to make people laugh their asses off. It's a pretty unique film.

(Release Info UK schedule; August 26th, 2019, Curzon Oxford, Westgate Centre, Oxford OX1 1NZ, United Kingdom, 6:15pm) (Release Info London schedule; August 27th, 2019, Curzon Mayfair, Curzon St, Mayfair, London W1J 7TY, United Kingdom, 6:15pm https://www.curzoncinemas.com/canterbury/film-info/souvenir "The Souvenir" Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne), a shy but ambitious film student, begins to find her voice as an artist while navigating a turbulent courtship with the charismatic but untrustworthy Anthony (Tom Burke). She defies her protective mother Rosalind (Tilda Swinton) and concerned friends as she slips deeper and deeper into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship that comes dangerously close to destroying her dreams. At once enrapturing and mysteriously unsettling "The Souvenir" is an enigmatic and personal portrait of the artist as a young woman, combining passionate emotions and exquisite aesthetics into a lush, dreamlike story of young adulthood and first love. The script for the film is a written and illustrated document about 30 pages long, which briefly describes the story. It includes photographs and drawings and also includes description of the internal lives of the characters, which of course is the one thing they always teach you not to do in school, but it's very useful. This road map of the journey ahead is shared with some cast and crew and not others, depending on what the film will be most impactful. In some ways, Hogg has been one of cinema’s best-kept secrets. Cineastes anxiously await her next film, even as she has remained largely unknown in 'The U.S.' With "The Souvenir", however, a wider audience may be exposed to her work for the first time; while the film is undeniably personal, it's also relatable and moving in it's profoundly heartbreaking and hypnotic story of a precarious first love and it's reverberating impact on a young woman’s life and art. The film arose from a desire to reflect on and transform her own beginnings as a filmmaker who broke the mold. This led to the creation of Julie, who's quietly contained yet also full of ambition, uncovering the confidence to express herself, yet entranced by the intellectual assurance of a man whos not what he seems. The fictional character of Julie is a British film student, dazzled by cinema in her youth. She goes to film school in the 1980s, studying at 'England’s National Film And Television School', based at 'Beaconsfield Studios'. She finds herself seeking out a way of telling stories that would be neither stark social realism nor pure fairy tale. She spends a lot of time in Sunderland, photographing the northeastern port city, which, in 'The Thatcher Economy' of the ’80s, is dotted with a sign of the times; the hulls of dying shipyards. After school, Julie begins directing music videos and television, but also feeding her hunger for art and literature, waiting until she's ready to tell her own stories. Julie is a compassionate person, open to people from all walks of life and not really interested in judging people. She moves back and forth, in that young adult way, between the poles of confdence and hesitation, desire and responsibility, fragility and tenacity, imagination and delusion. Julie at once wants to expand her view of the world while urgently needing to protect herself and her dreams. It's a mesmerizingly compassionate and unguarded portrait of a fictional female filmmaker who resembles, at least in outline. Julie sweeps into a searing first romance by the alluring but complicated and perilous Anthony. Despite the undeniable passion between them, their unstable bond threatens to blow the lid off Julie’s dreams, even as she's just starting to come into her own. Someone trying to etch out her own creative voice even as she's alternately enchanted and disrupted by the ecstasies and damages of an all-consuming romance. The film’s surging momentum is built on Julie’s intense, at times destructive, attraction to Anthony, which does not abate even when she realizes he isn’t exactly the dazzling figure she imagined when he first came into her life. For all that Julie does not see or want to see about Anthony, there's something powerful about the way he sees her, about the way he takes her seriously as a force in the world, the way he admires her restless mind. Though she calls herself ordinary, Julie quietly drinks it in when Anthony playfully calls her a freak and tells her that she's lost and will always be lost. Anthony transforms in the flm through incarnations both light and dark, alluring and wounding. Julie feels Anthony understands her on a deep level. His words flatter her, that she's lost and a freak, but also that she's special. They resonate with her innate lack of confidence in who she's. Also, from the first time they talk at Julie’s party, Anthony shows engagement in Julie’s passion for making films, despite later having a dig at her socially aware film ideas. Anthony’s love for the films of 'Michael Powell' and 'Emeric Pressburger', who upended the realism of early '20th Century' cinema to create vivid stories of passion and fantasy. One of the first great explorations of the incompatibility of love and ambition, "The Red Shoes"; becomes something catalytic for Julie. We don’t want to see life played out as is, we want to see life as it's experienced within this soft machine. The film’s striking individual moments each seem to build upon each other into a mysterious accumulation, like the memory-laden pages of a photobook, capturing a time and a place but also a shifting internal world, as the audience experiences in concert with Julie doubt and wonder, insight and heartbreak. Rosalind, Julie’s mother, who's reserved and uncomprehending but also deeply caring, and who, unbeknownst to her, is financing both her daughter’s love affair and Anthony’s destructive behavior. Her current age pretty much matches that of our mothers at that time. We've an ongoing conversation about our parent's generation who grew up during 'The Second World War', about how this generation is dying out and how important it's to capture the specifcity of this generation. This is the perfect opportunity to take some of these ideas into a project. It refects Rosalind's own desire to not draw any heavy line between the personal and the work. A good portion of "The Souvenir" unfolds in Julie’s book-lined apartment. It is very much a young woman’s space, not quite fully formed in some ways, but also a space in which solitude, passion, friendship, division, and love enter and depart like visitors. The detailed design of the apartment is closely based on Hogg’s memories of her own early ’80s student fat. The film recreates a finely-detailed replica of the interior that was once her home in an 'RAF Aircraft Hangar'. This also transferred to the music Julie listens to in her apartment, from 'Joe Jackson' to 'The Psychedelic Furs'. Though much of the flm takes place indoors, in living rooms and bedroom chambers, or in museums, restaurants, professor’s offces and sound stages, there are also moments when it comes away. In a pivotal, dream-like sequence, Julie and Anthony take a train to Venice, at a portentous juncture in their tryst, for a starry-eyed getaway to the opera. Here, the film also breaks into a lush elegance. It's important to show Julie and Anthony on a romantic journey, part of a 'Grand Tour' which proves Anthony’s commitment to a certain kind of lifestyle. It's very seductive to Julie despite her having to pay for the privilege of it. There's also a melancholy surrounding this mini-shoot in Venice, coming as it did at the end of the main shoot, but also knowing what happens when Julie and Anthony return. Pivotal scenes in the early days of Anthony and Julie’s growing closeness take place in one of Anthony’s frequent haunts; 'The Wallace Collection'. This unique London museum showcases '17th', '18th', and '19th Century European' paintings, porcelain and furniture in the former home of 'The Marquesses Of Hertford', rife with an atmosphere of refnement and domesticity. The resonant precision of "The Souvenir’s" design opposes the woozy, disorienting chaos into which Julie and Anthony’s relationship falls, making it all the more affecting and mysterious. In fact, despite how tightly controlled the imagery might feel, with frames that mirror fgurative paintings, Hogg films almost entirely by intuition and improvisation, with a ferce devotion to uncovering emotional truth in the moment. The film puts to dynamic use a hauntingly static camera, which, amid our current appetite for distractions, seems to invite an almost electrifyingly intimate experience with the characters. The long shots open up space not only to dive into the emotional intoxication of Julie and Anthony’s desire and fantasies but also to depict the larger forces around them that can’t be contained. "The Souvenir" touches occasionally on fantasy realms, so it's fun to push those moments. "The Souvenir" is strongly rooted in a particular moment in time; early 1980s Britain, a time of jarring shifts, as 'Thatcherism' began fundamentally revamping 'The British Economy', ushering in an era of austerity and deregulation. There was increased societal fragmentation but also a fresh wave of social and political engagement; rising unemployment yet heightened aspiration; 'IRA' bombing campaigns, miners strikes and industrial upheaval, but also a London renaissance, as post-Punk angst gave way to a greater diversity of cultural expression. If the economic realities of early '1980s Britain' often exacerbated class divisions, for some it also suggested a different way forward; consciously trying to reimagine a more fuid and diverse society where class would matter less. The film is far more interested in human dynamics than class dynamics, even if one cannot ever fully escape class in defning identity or even psychology. "The Souvenir" explores a young woman who resists the idea that class and background must be the inviolable signifers they're for previous generations. Hogg has become renowned for her subterranean excavations of marital and familial relationships, and also for the distinctive feel of her films; with their mix of immersive precision, painterly frames and emotional force, her movies cast a spell. Here, her style merges thrillingly with classic romantic tragedy and a voyage of discovery. This beguiling tale of a dangerous, youthful love affair has the lived-in feeling of a powerful memory, a time capsule of the delicious messiness and dark seduction of one of those unsettling, volatile, unforgettable relationships that become part of who we're. Though Julie is transported to another world when she's with Anthony, she's also very much a product of, as well as someone refecting upon, her times. The specifcity of that's something the film builds through both character and design. In this case, the film also shares private artifacts; youthful diaries and notebooks that usually never see the light of day. The film conjures up a sense of the '80s, but not in a literal, slavish way. It’s more of an impression of that time, yet it could almost feel as if it's set now. "The Souvenir" mines the territory of not just what we experience in our most formative relationships, but what we take away; what's real, what's fantasy, and where they blend so fully that we can’t see where one ends or the other begins.

(Release Info London schedule; September 18th, 2019, Vue West End, 3 Cranbourn St, Leicester Square, London WC2H 7AL, UK, 20:00 pm) https://film.list.co.uk/cinema/43108-vue-west-end-london-wc2h/coming-soon/#times "Ad Astra" A sci-fi thriller set in the future, "Ad Astra" stars Maj. Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) as an elite astronaut who travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones) and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos.  In the future, astronaut Maj. Roy McBride is leading a team building the world’s largest antenna, designed to locate advanced alien life, when a sudden power surge almost costs him his life. This incident is the latest in a long line of recent catastrophes taking place on Earth, including fires and plane crashes, caused by electrical surges that have been happening due to radioactive bursts. U.S. intelligence believes that these bursts are a result of cosmic rays emanating from explosions that happened near 'Neptune' from 'The Lima Project', a long-ago mission whose ship disappeared in deep space 16 years after launching. The idea of 'The Lima Project' is that they would be far from 'The Sun' so it's magnetic field would not upset any instrumentation and they would be able to look with great accuracy at the reachable 'Universe' and check for all kinds of planets. The drive is to see if they could find signs of intelligent life. The commander of the Project was Roy’s father, Clifford McBride, a legendary astronaut who’s been missing for 16 years. Even though Roy hasn’t seen him since he was 16 years old, Roy has always idolized him, while inheriting his incredible tolerance for risk and his belief that the answers to all of life’s physical and metaphysical riddles lie in deep space. But Clifford had been a distant parent and husband and his neglect helped make Roy solitary and remote, closed off from relationships, repressing all emotions positive and negative. 'United States' government officials come to Roy and tell him that his father, whom he thought was long deceased, is alive and out at the edge of the solar system. Roy has got to communicate with him. They've to find him because he might be doing something horrifying, committing potential acts of terrorism in the rings of Neptune. They want to use Roy to lure him out of silence. You can imagine what that must be like for Roy. For 16 years you’ve thought your father was dead and all of a sudden, he might be alive and out there doing something destructive. To arrive at 'The Lima Project', Roy must first travel from 'Earth' to 'The Moon' via commercial shuttle and then transfer to a remote base to meet 'The Cepheus', the spacecraft that will take him first to 'Mars'. There, he will attempt to contact his father via a secure direct laser link, and, if successful, then on to 'The Lima'. Accompanying Roy on his journey is Col. Pruitt (Donald Sutherland), a retired 'SpaceCom' astronaut and one of his father’s oldest friends. Pruitt tells Roy, who he’d previously met when Roy was just a kid, that his last conversation with Clifford, many years earlier, had not been pleasant; Clifford became angry when Pruitt told him he was leaving 'SpaceCom'. Their flight to 'The Moon' is uneventful. 'The Moon' has become a series of highly developed outposts colonized by people from various countries from 'Earth', who, as on Earth, quarrel over resources. However, the areas in between these outposts are as lawless as 'The Wild West'. On their way to 'The Cepheus', they’re attacked by lunar pirates and renegades. If you look at the history of human endeavor, our species can’t seem to get past ideological squabbles. So we've a 'Moon' that’s filled with pirates because of the valuable natural resources there along with potential hostages they can hold for ransom. This is a future that has both problems and promise. Their military escort is killed and Pruitt is seriously hurt in the attack. Unable to continue on, Pruitt passes on to Roy a highly-classified video from 'SpaceCom' revealing top secret intelligence about 'The Lima Project'. After being away in space for so long without any discoveries, the scientists had become disillusioned. Half the crew wanted to return to 'Earth', but Clifford, would have none of it. As each faction tried to wrestle control of the ship, some kind of meltdown occurred with the anti-matter that powered 'The Project', releasing electromagnetic pulses which caused the explosions and threatened the entire stability of the solar system with already drastic effects on 'The Moon' and 'Mars'. Having lost his mind, Clifford executed the dissenters for mutiny, and since then has been hiding out in space. From the videotape, Roy realizes that the real goal of his mission is to quietly coax his father out of the darkness, so that the government can assassinate him and destroy 'The Lima Project' without the public knowing. Aboard 'The Cepheus' with a crew of four, Roy is annoyed when Captain, Lawrence Tanner (Donnie Kershawarz), insists on responding to an 'SOS' signal from a nearby Norwegian biomedical and animal research ship, 'The Vesta'. Roy reluctantly agrees to accompany Tanner onboard 'The Vesta', where they encounter no signs of human life but an enraged research baboon in zero-gravity that kills Tanner. Roy manages to eradicate the beast and make it back to 'The Cepheus'. Approaching Mars, Roy has to take over the controls when they experience a loss of power during landing and Tanner’s second, Lt. Donald Stanford, (Loren Dean) freezes up. Upon arrival, Roy is met by Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), 'The Superintendent Of The American Section' on Mars, before he’s quickly escorted to the secure laser link to contact 'The Lima Project'. Roy’s first attempt at reaching his father, reading a statement prepared by officials, is unsuccessful, but after delivering an unscripted informal message, he’s informed that he will not be continuing on the mission because he’s too close to the subject and poses too much of a psychological risk. They will send 'The Cepheus' crew instead. Frustrated and angry, Roy turns to Helen, who confesses that, like him, she too was orphaned by 'The Lima Project', that her parents were among the scientists murdered by Clifford when they wanted to return to 'Earth'. She tells him that 'The Cepheus' is being loaded with nuclear munitions in order to assassinate Clifford and destroy 'The Lima'. Knowing that it’s Roy’s destiny to complete his journey, Helen leads him to an underground lake where he can gain entry to 'The Cepheus'. Making it aboard just in time, Roy must face off with the crew who have been ordered to terminate him. Following a zero-gravity fight to the death, Roy continues on to 'Neptune' alone, a trip of 79 days, 4 hours and 8 minutes. Anxious to confront his father, Roy is no longer the emotionally repressed, unsociable man he was when he began his mission. He’s had enough of his solitary existence in space.  He’s ready to try exploring human connections on 'Earth'. There’s a new passage in his life that’s taking hold. We see Roy at this point in his life where this is no longer working for him, and he’s becoming aware of it. And that's set against finding out that his father may still be alive. Roy as an extension of practically everybody, who's headed somewhere, but not exactly sure where. Roy is thinking he knows what he wants and even got a little of it, but there’s something seriously lacking. There’s a hole that needs to be filled inside and he can’t verbalize it yet. So, the whole point of the movie is, how to fill that hole. It’s really about his solitude, about how alone he's, about how he has all this information he can’t communicate to these other people, about how he doesn't know them, and about how that’s how everybody wants it. The more connection there's, the more risk there's, the more risk to the mission, the more risk there's to him personally. And so, he meets these other people, but doesn't care about their reality. Roy feels fully alive when he’s up on top of the Earth’s atmosphere, when he’s away, when he’s exploring. That’s when he feels alive. And he has a relationship with this woman, Eve (Liv Tyler). Eve, is Roy’s former partner, shown primarily in flashbacks. She's cares about him and he seemed to care about her but he’s got something, a block in him, that makes him push her away. And it’s caused by his father abandoning him years ago led to his inability to have intimacy in his life, just like his father. So he’s not just alone, but a loner. Someone who, in a way, prefers it. At least it in the first half of the movie, and has to deal with his own issues, and actually, if you can’t express things to people, if you've to keep things a secret, that’s a huge cause of anxiety, not being able to reveal yourself to anyone or anything. All through his assignment, Roy is monitored, and not only for his vitals. The idea is to chart his psychological state, and let’s be honest, in such a circumstance, there’s this potential catastrophe, there’s this struggle to get to know who your father was, and of course, all this is against the back drop of having to leave 'The Earth', having to leave terra firma. So, that’s a whole lot for a person to try to absorb, and he kinds of breaks a little bit. The risk to his psychological state is even greater than his physical state. Along the way, Roy realizes that he’s sort of turning into his father, and he has to stop that. He doesn’t want to be his father; somebody that escapes his humanity. And he finally is determined to return to Earth and become a father and a caring, connected human being, a man who's not afraid of intimacy with other people. Clifford is a sort of an Ahab figure. That he had become obsessed with his white whale of trying to find all the cute little aliens that were going to bail us out and provide us with answers. Roy’s father, Clifford, wants to be the first person to discover meaningful life outside of our planet and years and years have gone by and most of the people in 'The Lima Project' had become disillusioned thinking that there’s no signs of life. Clifford is a great astronaut, an explorer, who becomes a dangerous man. A lost man. He's a vain man, and he’s determined, he’s not going to give up. He’s going to stay there even after the last member of his team is dead and is going to keep looking for life outside of 'Earth'. He clearly doesn’t care about anything on 'Earth'. He doesn’t care about the lives of his own fellow scientists aboard 'The Lima Project' nor anything else. To provide insight and information to Roy about Clifford’s real nature and intentions, the film creates the character of Col. Pruitt, an old friend of Clifford’s who’s assigned to accompany him on his mission. Pruitt knows what has happened to Roy’s father and what 'SpaceCom' really intends to do, and represents the kind of human connection Roy has learned to live without. Pruitt can’t go on the journey with Roy. You want him to go, you want him to be a kind of protector for Roy in some way, but he’s weak, he can’t do it. Helen Lantos is very much a root of the human experience, even though she doesn’t appear very much in the film. For Helen, a woman born and raised on 'Mars', you needed an emotionality, a connectedness. Roy’s meets Helen in an underground dwelling, represents a turning point for him. She's sort of a flip side of him. She represents somebody who has also been orphaned by people on 'The Lima Project'. She was orphaned on Mars and left there at a young age when her parents enlisted to go on Clifford McBride’s expedition. And she had a lot of hurt and anger about that, but unlike Roy, she didn’t really bury it. She’s been dealing with it and living with it throughout every day of her life and Roy sees that in her. She’s concerned for the other people there. Nobody tells her anything. Roy is the only person that’s ever been honest with her. She, in turn, is actually honest with him. He doesn't have many of those people in his life. But there's this bond between them, and although it’s not romantic, that’s what leads him to acts of desperation, and it’s what leads her to help him board 'The Cepheus' to 'Neptune', even though it will undoubtedly cost her job and perhaps worse. The script is very existential and not your typical sci-fi outer space movie. The design is always rooted in something tangible that we can understand. There are a lot of details of 'The International Space Station' and people living in tight claustrophobic spaces. There's no cruise ship fantasy vision of the future. For a film that takes place mostly in outer space, "Ad Astra" has very little green screen and 'CGI' work. All the monitors, the cockpits, and the backings are practical, which fit the aesthetic and feel for the movie. We've 'The Moon' as more or less a very highly developed series of outposts. The main lunar concourse and tunnels are all polished concrete and rough-faced concrete. Then on 'Mars', which is sort of the last manned outpost for the film, we look at images of a scientific outpost in 'Antarctica' today. 'The Mars Communication Center', the rotunda takes on an atmospheric color that's sort of an orangey-gray light with some fog to enhance the sense that it's humid and damp. It has a fairly neutral clean palette with tones of gray and brown, because the film reserves color for Mars. The lighting feels and looks like being in a humid incubator. When you do a period movie, not everything should be from that moment in time. Early on we've an expression; look to the past to see the future. The film includes things from different time periods to represent the idea of new technology colliding with things from the past. What you won’t see in "Ad Astra" are futuristic gadgets and weapons. We’re taking a little step backwards, with people still using paper, still using old systems of communication. The most futuristic item we've is a little, clear scanner because the screens will be transparent and project information on them. When you think about costumes for a science fiction movie, it’s one of the great challenges because the clothing gets dated instantly, no matter how artistic you get with a zipper or pocket. Finding a way to make it banal and ordinary yet 100 years in the future, which is difficult because the results have to be totally invisible. The space suits are very close to what 'The Apollo Crew' wore, which is why they're completely different from those in current space movies where they've been totally invented. Space suits come complete with a cooling system, materials that expand and contract from pressure, and of course a computer. There’s an entire world inside that space suit. People are wearing what they should be wearing, which is hard in a science fiction movie. This film is inspired by Joseph Conrad’s 'Heart Of Darkness' How would that be if you had nothing to lose and you're in deep space. There’s no end to what experiments you might be willing to undergo or to perform. The idea is to have a character on a transformative journey. Like '2001: A Space Odyssey' which has 'The Homeric Odyssey' sort of imbued within it. There have been so many great films made in the science fiction genre, but how many of them are there that move you? It's the opposite of most space travel movies that offer a somewhat positive view which results in meeting aliens, intelligent life that are benevolent or at least interesting enough to involve us. What if there’s nothing? What if there’s a kind of emptiness out there that we can’t even grapple with. The film explores the fact that as human beings, we’re not really meant to be in space. We’re not designed to be floating around 250 miles outside the atmosphere. We’re not built for that, and we’re never going to be built for that. And that's going to have a cost. Either we’re not alone in the universe, or we're, and both are equally terrifying. What's vulnerability? What's strength in a man? Where does strength really come from? True confidence comes from we as individuals being able to acknowledge our foibles, our shortcomings, our insecurities, and instead of hiding or trying to cover that to actually be very open. A lot of us now are looking at maybe making a sustainable human presence on another planet in our solar system, and specifically the red planet, and thinking about all the wonderful utopia that it might be. And that we've to consider, what if it turns out that it’s not a utopia. What if it’s a dystopia? And what if we can break the bonds of gravity and with our rockets and that advanced technology transport humanity to another planet, but we take our human failings along with us? What if it doesn’t turn out well. This idea of space travel is both beautiful and horrifying at the same time. We're hugely in favor of space exploration and missions to 'Mars'. But sometimes exploration is also a means of escape. People have to understand that at some point it's incumbent on us to both cherish exploration and to cherish 'The Earth'. 'The Earth' and the human connection are worth preserving at all costs. This movie isn’t the future, it’s a future. This story is not necessarily the future we think is going to happen, it’s not a predictive movie. It’s just a film about what could happen if space exploration continued and we populated 'The Moon' and 'Mars' and beyond. This movie is almost an extension of the ‘60s and ‘70s space technology, as if it had progressed, jumped into the future without most of the things that most of today’s science fiction movies are made of. The film tends to view progress in a mostly optimistic way and is resistant to present a dystopian future in which everything is terrible. Neither it's a movie that says in the future everything will be incredible and great. It will be more or less like we live now, but with a few more gadgets.  

In Marvel Studios’ “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany)—an attorney specializing in superhuman-oriented legal cases—must navigate the complicated life of a single, 30-something who also happens to be a green 6-foot-7-inch superpowered hulk. ★★★★★ Directed by: #KatCoiro Produced by: #KevinFeige #LouisD’Esposito #VictoriaAlonso #BradWinderbaum #KatCoiro #JessicaGao Starring: #TatianaMaslany #GingerGonzaga #JameelaJamil #JoshSegarra #JonBass Released: Aug. 18, 2022 TV review by: Ahmed Abbas | Published: Aug. 18, 2022 Watching the four screened episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law quickly had me reminiscing about my childhood, when I’d wake up early on a Sunday morning to catch the Marvel cartoons on TV. The weekly, fun, episodic adventures into the world of Marvel that were once a staple of my childhood have returned in my adulthood, matched in tone and creativity in She-Hulk’s four debut episodes. The series achieves what Marvel hasn’t pulled off in the past – a light-hearted tone that doesn’t take itself too seriously and adopts a meta-approach, matched perfectly to the material. While Marvel has certainly delved into comedy in the past, occasionally the tone may not feel right for a project, or a joke may not land. So far, the tone of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law feels natural and suited to the series. After the initial teaser trailer’s debut, countless fans were outspoken regarding the title character’s animation quality. While the series’ debut was still three months away, that didn’t defer the discourse. Having viewed the first four episodes on the big screen, I am happy to confirm that the CGI was in fact, much improved by the series’ release, as many expected. In fact, there are certain shots that look unexpectedly real. As usual, Marvel’s standard of CGI is met, whether it be virtual environments or giant abominations. Of course, there is room for improvement in certain cases, but the degree met more than satisfies. The quality of the CGI featured is surprising, as there is a myriad of visual effect types, from monstrous behemoths to magic-wielding sorcerers; this is not to forget that the lead character is in She-Hulk form for a lengthy amount of the episodes. This series certainly has more demanding effects than Marvel’s other streaming releases yet executed them the best. The visual effects quality is certainly not a concern in this release. The plot surrounding a legal department for super-powered individuals is a fantastically creative concept that grants the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) a sense of verisimilitude, being that if super-powered people did exist, a legal department catered specifically for cases involving them would undoubtedly exist. To fans of legal dramas, the episodes don’t accurately abide by courtroom procedure, but for a show that doesn’t take itself too seriously, this is inconsequential and only noticeable to those who know the intricate ins and outs of a courtroom. The story intertwines Jennifer’s superhero and courtroom duties perfectly, relating her clients (or legal opponents) to the situations which require a Hulk’s touch. This keeps the narrative’s pace organic and without awkward stops as several other shows are guilty of. Looking back, the show gets straight to the point and transforms Jennifer into She-Hulk within the first five minutes. On the one hand, this is a positive in that we quickly get to the series’ title character. However, for a nine-episode season and with She-Hulk now having been confirmed to have a long-term future in the MCU, it may have been better served to elongate Jennifer’s life before the transformation to contrast the two periods and provide the character with long-term growth, so viewers can trace her journey project-to-project. This approach does keep Kevin Feige’s (President of Marvel Studios) promise of no more origin stories – instead, it opts for a brief flashback, quickly bringing viewers to speed on She-Hulk’s genesis, before continuing her post-transformation adventures. The fleeting origin misses out on presenting a proper view into Jennifer’s pre-Hulk life and the ensuing bedlam spawned by the transformation, which would have brought some much-needed depth to the episode. Past this, the debut four episodes have excellent pacing, with a recipe that fuses the procedural and serialised formats: each episode is its own self-contained story that introduces a character to become the central focus of the following episode whilst a looming storyline is slowly being set up. The series remains faithful to the character traits from the source material, maintaining Walters’ iconic fourth wall breaks from the comics. This presents an interesting notion for the future of the MCU, as a character confirmed for future ensemble projects solely possesses a cognizance of the viewers watching her, and it appears this may be addressed in upcoming releases. Beyond Walters, the series makes fourth wall breaks of its own, almost eerily showing how in touch the writers are with the fanbase, even to the extent of typical online debates amongst fans on social media, recounting their words verbatim. This is a testament that not only have the creators done their research into the various sects of fans, but they too are fans that witness these frequent discussions. While I do often maintain that Marvel occasionally goes too far with its humour, the series has yet to make this transgression, and in fact, with the distinct nature of Walters’ personality, the series has been able to go beyond a few mere cheap laughs, even going as far as cheekily verbalising the thoughts of the viewers, leading to a room full of flustered laughs in the screening. This self-aware sense of humour is one of the greater benefits of employing fans to develop your projects and one I encourage the MCU to implement more in the future. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law features a delightful performance from Emmy® Award-winning actress Tatiana Maslany. While the series has made fantastic use of her upbeat, comical, and innocent attributes, I hope the series utilises her full potential. Having seen her several performances in Orphan Black, Maslany has demonstrated, perhaps more than anyone in Hollywood, the scope of her acting range. To not utilise her solemn potential (during appropriate moments) would be an incredible waste of her ability. There was a lick of this side of Jennifer’s character in the first episode, but more of that side of her would go a long way for the series. Maslany comes packed with her range from previous performances, illustrating why she is deserving of a mainstay in Hollywood’s most successful entertainment franchise. The ensemble cast members are just getting started, but it remains to be seen if they’ll have their chance to shine. Knowing the fans, Jameela Jamil, Ginger Gonzaga, and Josh Segarra will undoubtedly become fan favourites. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law goes back to Marvel’s roots, recreating the simplicity and tonal majesty that seized the hearts of fans in their youth by adapting a source material perfectly catered to Marvel’s cinematic enterprise.

(See How They Run • 2022 ‧ Mystery/Crime ‧ 1h 38m • Showtimes.London • Fri 9 Sept • Sat 10 Sept • Sun 11 Sept • Mon 12 Sept • Tue 13 Sept • Wed 14 Sept • Thu 15 Sept • Empire Cinemas - London Haymarket, 400 m·63-65 Haymarket, LONDON SW1Y 4RL, United Kingdom, 17:00 • 19:30 ODEON Luxe, 400 m·24-26 Leicester Square, LONDON WC2H 7JY, United Kingdom, 15:45 • 18:15 • 20:45 • Leicester Square, 400 m·Leicester Square, LONDON WC2H 7NA, United Kingdom, 13:00 • 15:30 • 18:00 • 20:30 Vue Cinema London - West End (Leicester Square), 500 m·Leicester Square, 3 Cranbourn Street, LONDON WC2H 7AL, United Kingdom, 14:00 • 15:40 • 18:10 ▪ 20:40 Vue Cinema London - Piccadilly, 550 m·19 Lower Regent Street, LONDON SW1Y 4LR, United Kingdom, 17:50 • 19:30 Picturehouse Central, 600 m·Piccadilly Circus, 13 Coventry Street, LONDON W1D 7DH, United Kingdom, 13:40 • 16:00 • 18:20 • 20:40) "See How They Run" In the West End of 1950s London, plans for a movie version of a smash-hit play come to an abrupt halt after the film’s Hollywood director is murdered. When world-weary Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and eager rookie Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) take on the case, the two find themselves thrown into a puzzling whodunit within the glamorously sordid theater underground, investigating the mysterious homicide at their own peril. On London’s West End, the long-running play 'The Mousetrap' is a hit and Hollywood comes knocking at the stage door. Arrogant American director, Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody), blacklisted in the U.S., gets the job to adapt the murder mystery to the screen with a script by Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo). However, anticipating all eventualities, that shrewd matriarch of mystery known here only as the Dame (Shirley Henderson) has inserted a caveat in her contract, the producers can’t film the play until six months after it's theatrical run ends. As actual corpses begin piling up backstage, a cynical Scotland Yard detective Inspector Stoppard and an enthusiastic newbie Constable Stalker have to reconcile their personal differences on the way to identifying the killer. Turning adversity into opportunity, the film sets a playful tone as an antidote to dark times and to celebrate the life of the theater. Odd-couple investigative pairings appear frequently in mysteries, the crime fighters at the movie’s center are opposites who ultimately must surmount their differences to catch the culprit. They drive everything with wit and skilled sleuthing. At it's heart, the story of Stoppard and Striker is one about partnership and the teamwork required to achieve something. Neither of them anticipate that they might work well together at the start, but it feels like it could be an exciting thing by the end and it’s very funny along the way. Stoppard is a drunk, sexist Inspector from Scotland Yard who has post-traumatic stress from the war and his wife has left him. He has a Nat King Cole thing going; this moustache is clearly a Clark Gable wannabe. And then the clothes, this is a person who has a sense of himself and is very presentational in terms of his personality. He’s sort of a tragic, dark character in a comic arena. Stoppard is pretty broken when we meet him. He’s just gotten a bit lazy. He’s a bit bored, melancholic and fed up. There’s a bit of redemption. He learns how to become a better person and a better detective. Stalker is very, very green, new to the job and eager, that’s really where the story begins. Stalker is way over her head. She’s suddenly put on this massive murder case, so she’s incredibly nervous about doing a good job while also being unbelievably excited by the fact that she's in the theatre world and surrounded by movie and theater stars. This is weirdly like a dream come true for her, it’s like she’s watching a movie play right in. The audience follows Stoppard and Stalker as they try to figure out who's running around killing people in the West End. Over the course of their investigation, through theaters, posh hotels and country homes, the pair take a journey. Despite himself, Stoppard finds a bit of redemption, learning from his cohort. They change each other unexpectedly, he helps her grow up a little bit, and she helps him find some of his vivacity and the energy he used to have. Leo Kopernick is a blacklisted Hollywood film director. He's arrogant and abrasive, with little respect for London theater culture. At the time during the Cold War, if anyone within the entertainment sector had any kind of alliance or assumed alliance with communism, they were blacklisted. So, the backstory really is that Leo refused to name names in a hearing and is still working his way. Leo, like any filmmaker, is very passionate about his vision. He’s very extreme, larger than life and entertaining, and probably not the most likeable guy. Leo was hired to take the very successful theatre production and make a film version of it. And along the way, he infuriates everyone. Petula 'Choo" Spencer (Ruth Wilson) is a prominent theater impresario. Scandalized by the actual corpses that are cropping up on the set of her murder mystery, she runs the play of 'The Mouse Trap'. A sort of haughty Madame, and a great counterpoint to these other fools she has to deal with. John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith) is a respected film producer. Woolf has this sort of slight desperation, even though he must charm everyone while sweating underneath. He’s desperate to get his film made. Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson) is a slightly pompous actor in the play. With an insecurity underneath. Dickie slightly believes he's the character he plays on stage, which he's not. Agatha Christie (Shirley Henderson) is the Queen of crime and popular author of the play. In the film, she’s in her fifties, very happily married to Max with a grown-up daughter. At the end we find her trying to come up with the ending of another book. Ann Saville (Pippa Bennett Warner) is Woolf’s personal secretary and mistress. They sneak around to hilarity until Kapernik discovers their relationship and uses it to blackmail Woolf. Edana Romney (Sian Clifford) is Woolf’s wife. A hobbyist clairvoyant. A rather eccentric character, very much into psychic abilities, with her tarot cards and astrology, and a marriage on the rocks. Mervyn Crocker-Norris is a celebrated screenwriter. A mildly successful, pretentious playwright, who has been tasked with adapting the play into a film. Crocker-Norris proves a frothy side in the film-within-the-film. This character is delicious and frivolous and self-important. Running for 68 years, 'The Mousetrap' stood out. "See How They Run" is set during the celebration of the play’s 100th performance, and while the mood is postwar, pre-sexual revolution Britain, the artists behind the camera took a playful approach to the representation of those middle ages of the 20th Century, the 1950’s. This is an era close to Dicks-Mireaux’s heart. It’s not so much the shapes but it’s the transitional social world, the change from the 1940s into this new world of the 1950s. What you get is a contrast of shapes which are quite well-defined and flattering on a lot of people. You've some latitude with some aspects of the design, like some of the furniture is not strictly 1950s but other aspects of it, like technology, have to be. So, it’s interesting knowing where you draw the line and which bits you’re going to be really authentic with and which bits you've some creative freedom with. We've a big contrast between the Stoppard and Stalker world to the theatre world, elevated with their colors and choices and combinations. A murder mystery with deliciously smart humor set against the backdrop of arguably the world’s most famous murder mystery is a gem of an idea that plays enticingly between fact and fiction. It's a big leap to take on this kind of period project about a British literary icon. About the transition from TV to film. The script comes off the page as funny, smart and witty and has all the kind of the range of comic elements. It’s a pretty zany plot with some poignant moments. It’s a satirical and farcical look at the murder mystery genre. Written by Gregory Mann

(The Lost King • 2022 ‧ Drama/Comedy ‧ 1h 48m • Showtimes London • Fri 7 Oct • Sat 8 Oct • Sun 9 Oct • Mon 10 Oct • Tue 11 Oct • Wed 12 Oct • Thu 13 Oct Cine Lumiere, 3,8 km·17 Queensberry Place, LONDON SW7 2DT, United Kingdom, 18:15 • 20:30 Olympic Studios, 8,6 km·Barnes, 117-123 Church Road, LONDON SW1 3 9HL, United Kingdom, 14:30 • 17:20 • 20:20) /10/11/22/ London (BFI Film Festival) "The Lost King" In the archaeological find of a century, the remains of King Richard III, presumed scattered over 500 years ago, were discovered under a parking lot in Leicester in 2012. The search was spearheaded by amateur historian Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins), whose passion and unrelenting research were met with skepticism by the academic establishment. "The Lost King" is the story of Philippa Langley who refused to be ignored and took on Britain’s most eminent historians, forcing them to rethink the legacy of one of the most controversial rulers in English history. A tale of discovery, obsession, and stolen glory, "The Lost King" is a magical adventure illuminated by one woman’s awakened sense of purpose. Philippa is a complex character, who tries the patience of the people in her life early in the film. She's very radiant. Philippa is like water. She always finds another way around, never really accepted ‘no’, and kept going gently, quietly over the years. You underestimate her at your peril. She has tenacity and wouldn’t be marginalized. Although Langley rigorously investigated Richard’s life and death, part of the reason she suggested digging where she did was a feeling about the location. Philippa isn't placed front and center in the aftermath of the discovery of Richard’s remains. The image of a king who was maligned and history tells us had a physical deformity fused in our heads with Philippa, who was struggling at work because of this condition that robbed her of energy, and was being unfairly judged as a result. When we look at some of our most amazing scientific discoveries, they've begun with an intuition. It’s the capacity to blend into a crowd, and then to shine out of that crowd with tremendous potency and light. Richard III (Harry Loyd) is an extension of her subconscious, when she’s talking to him, she’s talking to herself. The long dead monarch is reflecting and giving her some quiet confidence, reminding her that she herself is brilliant. Often his job is not about helping Philippa find him, he’s helping her find herself. Other characters depicted in the film based on real people include renowned archeologist Richard Buckley (Mark Addy) who oversaw the dig for Richard’s remains. Buckley is very clear that none of it would ever have happened without Philippa, and yet there are moments when she's being marginalized. "The Lost King" features iconic locations including the medieval old town, Edinburgh Castle, St Mary’s Cathedral and the Forth Bridge, which serves as a brief backdrop to the Albert Pub, where the Ricardians hold their meetings in the film. One of the more elaborate scenes was the recreation of Richard’s reburial, and his tomb in Leicester Cathedral and then transported to St Mary’s. 'Richard III' is part of a group of Shakespeare plays known as the 'histories', which deal with events in England that took place after the Norman Conquest in 1066. The play has been the best-known depiction of Richard over the past four centuries. "The Lost King" depicts Richard in a far more flattering light than Shakespeare did. He brought stability to England; established the principle that you’re innocent until proven guilty. It’s a counterpoint to Shakespeare. So many people think everything he wrote is true. But it’s important to remember that Shakespeare’s play was written over 100 years after Richard’s death. And it was based on a narrative from Thomas More, who was five years old when Richard was king. Highlighting the power of mythology and how misinformation can endure over centuries, that archeologists still doubted hypothesis about Richard’s remains right up until they were found. The film is inspired by the headline: ‘Mother of Two From Edinburgh Finds Lost King in Car Park'. It's the.story about the way women are overlooked and ignored. About the little person refusing to take no for an answer. And about not always accepting everything we’re told as gospel. People don’t like injustice. People do like David and Goliath stories, and this is a David and Goliath story of the amateur vs. the establishment. While "The Lost King" chronicles Langley’s startling discovery and the new light it shed on the history of the British monarchy, it’s also a conversation about sexual politics. It’s about a woman in a strongly patriarchal society who asserts herself and takes control of her life. What's as relevant now as it's back then are the story’s themes of tolerance and justice and the idea that life is almost never black and white. "The Lost King" touches on themes of power, glory and history, and who gets to control them. Written by Gregory Mann