Search Results

(Triangle of Sadness • Showtimes Near London • Thu 13 Oct • Fri 14 Oct • Sat 15 Oct • Sun 16 Oct • Mon 17 Oct • Tue 18 Oct • Wed 19 Oct • Curzon Wimbledon, 11,1 km·23 The Broadway - Merton, WIMBLEDON SW19 1RE, United Kingdom, 17:30 Curzon Richmond, 13,6 km·3 Water Lane, RICHMOND TW9 1TJ, United Kingdom, 17:30) "Triangle Of Sadness" In "Triangle Of Sadness" social hierarchy is turned upside down, revealing the tawdry relationship between power and beauty. Celebrity model couple, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged boat captain (Woody Harrelson). What first appeared instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island and fighting for survival. "Triangle Of Sadness" addresses issues of gender roles and behavioral expectations, primarily with Carl and Yaya when they argue about who should pay for dinner at the start of the film. The film wants to look at these differences through the main characters. For example, a male model generally earns only a third of what a female model does. Numerous male models often have to maneuver past powerful homosexual men in the industry who want to sleep with them, sometimes with the promise of a more successful career. In some respects, being a male model mirrors what women have to deal with in a patriarchal society. A running joke for the female models is that when their modeling career is over, they always can marry rich men and become trophy wives, something that's not really possible for the male models. The second part is set on a super yacht. The Captain is a an idealist, an alcoholic, and a Marxist. The captain should hostes the captain’s dinner, a seven-course meal, on the same evening as a storm approaches. The passengers get seasick and the captain becomes so drunk that he starts to read from the Communist Manifesto over the speaker system while the guests are puking. The captain has to be an idealist, an alcoholic and a Marxist for that to be possible. The scenes in which Dimitriy’s (Zlatko Boric) wife Abigail (Donna De Leon) and others vomit copiously during high seas is, we presume, a way of avenging them for their obscene wealth. It’s about the power you hold in a world where beauty is valuable. Initially Carl is a model who's losing his hair. The dynamic between Carl and Yaya is still stilted because she’s a beautiful, slightly older model who's on the rise while he’s on the way down. When they end up stranded on the island, he's able to use his beauty as economy. The last part of the film to take place on a deserted island. On the island, when it turns out that the cleaning lady knows how to fish and make a fire, the old hierarchy is turned upside down. When Carl gets together with Abigail, it seems they've some kind of connection beyond the transactional. We see Carl as this young guy searching for meaning in a relationship that was otherwise meaningless. Even though he really likes Yaya, it gets to the point where Abigail is this beacon of strength and modernity. Carl isn’t happy with the traditional gender roles that define his relationship with Yaya and then he meets this powerful provider in Abigail and he finds that really attractive. The relationship between Carl and Abigail should be more nuanced than, ‘Oh, he’s sleeping with her to get extra pretzels’, if only because he wouldn’t humiliate his girlfriend for extra pretzels alone. And then, in a weak moment, Carl’s relationship with Abigail spiraled into something more meaningful. There are many different tiers in the world of fashion, so it's more about trying to figure out where Carl had been positioned at the height of his success and where he's positioned at the start of the film. According to his back story, he uses to be a mechanic and he was scouted. It's about trying to ground the story in that context. We always imagine that Abigail and Yaya, having sensed that something is about to go very wrong. But there’s always a chance that Carl is being selfish and running away from everything. Triangle of Sadness" is a term used in the beauty industry. 'Oh, you've a quite deep triangle of sadness, but I can fix that with Botox in 15 minutes'. It suggests you’ve had a lot of struggles in your life. It said something about our era’s obsession with looks and that inner wellbeing is, in some respects, secondary. Many scenes in "Triangle Of Sadness" have a connection to a sociological study or an anecdote that we think highlights something from a behaviouristic point of view. We use our clothes to try and hide in the social group to which we're connected. Our clothes are our camouflage. Just think about the concerns we've when we're going to a fancy evening party; we really don’t want to be over- or underdressed. If we get it wrong we feel exposed. From an economical perspective it really makes sense that fashion brands create new collections all the time. Then we've to change our clothes more often and consume more. The way we look affects every social encounter. The fact that looks play such a key role in society is something of a universal inequality, but on the other hand you can be born beautiful wherever you come from and that beauty can be used to climb the socioeconomic ladder in a class-based society. Rich people are nice. Successful people are often very socially skilled, otherwise they wouldn’t be so successful. There’s an ongoing myth that successful and rich people are horrible, but it’s reductive. It’s probably a more accurate description of what the world looks like. Can Films, and, in fact, culture in general change our society? There's an influence of gangster rap on our behavior. To answer yes to that question is not the same as being pro-censorship. We believe in freedom of speech, but we should also be aware of the consequences that this cultural expression might create. Written by Gregory Mann

(Girl Picture London ICA Cinema Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, St. James's Fri 7th Oct @ 16:30 Wed 12th Oct @ 16:20 Thu 13th Oct @ 13:45 Riverside Studios Cinema 101 Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith Fri 7th Oct @ 20:30 Sat 8th Oct @ 18:15 Sun 9th Oct) "Girl Picture" Best friends Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) and Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen) have each other’s backs, always. Mimmi and Rönkkö work after school at a food court smoothie kiosk, frankly swapping stories of their frustrations and expectations regarding love and sex. They navigate the ups and downs of love, sex, and personal identity, always comparing notes at the smoothie stand where they both work. They want to live adventurous lives, loaded with experiences and passion. A proud outsider, tough-minded Mimmi must learn to let down her guard when she begins to fall for high-achieving figure skater Emma (Linnea Leino). Volatile misfit Mimmi, unexpectedly swept up in the thrill of the new romance with Emma, struggles to adjust to the trust and compromise required by a lasting relationship. Emma, on the contrary, has given her whole life to figure skating. Meanwhile, the offbeat, indefatigable Rönkkö’s determination to have gratifying sex leads her into a series of clumsy hookups. She hits the teen party scene, stumbling through a series of awkward encounters with members of the opposite sex while hoping to find her own version of satisfaction. Nothing gets between her and success. But when the girls meet, life opens new paths, and they all rocket in new directions. While Mimmi and Emma experience the earth moving effects of first love, Rönkkö is on a quest to find pleasure. Mimmi, Emma and Rönkkö are girls at the cusp of womanhood, trying to draw their own contours. Brought to life by a lively, endearing trio of performers, "Girl Picture" is a look at female friendship and sexuality that feels infused with the open-minded, joyful spirit of it's young characters. It's a fragment of the lives of three girls at the cusp of womanhood, when every moment is so amplified, that even afragment may include a whole universe. It's a film about the need to be seen. 17–18-year-old Mimmi, Emma and Rönkkö are girls at what we call a liminal age, right at the cusp of womanhood, fluctuating between childhood and adulthood. At this age the gaze of another person feels like a superpower, it can define, strengthen or change one’s self image in an instant. Closeness with the other is very inviting, it hooks us. And then suddenly, an overwhelming realization takes over, how to be close to another person, if you’re only just drawing your own contours? The story follows the girls on three consecutive Fridays, during which Mimmi and Emma experience the earth moving impact of falling in love, while Rönkkö goes on a quest for something she hasn’t yet experienced: pleasure. The condensed timeframe means it’s a fragment of their lives. But because teenager's lives are so amplified, and every moment counts for everything, a fragment may very well encapsulate a whole universe. And there, in center of the universe emerges the picture of us. Of the film’s many themes, the one that became the most important for me, is the safe freedom of the girls. Mimmi, Emma and Rönkkö get to concentrate on exploring their identities without any threats. They catapult at full speed toward emotions, situations and sexuality, on their own terms, and they never end up in danger. They're not punished for desiring. They don’t get warned, belittled, shamed or patronized. In that sense, this is perhaps more a film about the world we aspire for, than the world we live in. And that’s why "Girl Picture" invites us not only to look at girls, but to really see them. Written by Gregory Mann

(Corsage • 2022 ▪ /10/24/222/ Arts Picturehouse, 79,3 km·38-39 St Andrew's Street, CAMBRIDGE CB2 3AR, United Kingdom, 20:25) "Corsage" Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps) is idolized for her beauty and renowned for inspiring fashion trends. But in 1877, ‘Sissi’ celebrates her 40th birthday and must fight to maintain her public image by lacing her corset tighter and tighter. While Elisabeth’s role has been reduced against her wishes to purely performative, her hunger for knowledge and zest for life makes her more and more restless in Vienna. She travels to England and Bavaria, visiting former lovers and old friends, seeking the excitement and purpose of her youth. With a future of strictly ceremonial duties laid out in front of her, Elisabeth rebels against the hyperbolized image of herself and comes up with a plan to protect her legacy. We all grew up with Romy Schneider as Sissi. Depictions of Sissi are everywhere nonetheless. Sissi is certainly Viennas central tourist attraction. The trilogy still screens on television every Christmas. It depicts Empress Elisabeth as a young obedient monarch in a kitschy, folklore-style setting. This Elisabeth, on the other hand, is 40, so she’s an old woman by the standards of her day, grappling with her life and searching for some way to escape it's constraints. Why did Elisabeth have fitness equipment built for her? Why did she refuse to be painted after she was 40? This is the phase in Elisabeth’s life when, on the one hand, she begins to rebel against all the ceremony and, on the other hand, started to withdraw and isolate herself; a time when it had quite obviously become impossible for her to squeeze herself into a predetermined template. There’s that sense of always having to live up to an outsized image of yourself, as that’s the only way for you to gain recognition and love. She lives in a tight corset of self-restraint and societal censure. At first she's still keen to measure up to her own aspirations, as well as satisfying public expectations that she will conform to an idealized image. For decades she helped cement that image with her cult of beauty and iconic braided hairstyle. But Elisabeth has grown older and is tired of passing muster as an image of perfection. Riddled with despair, Elisabeth increasingly withdraws from her life. That’s exactly what the real Elisabeth is said to have done. In later life, she only appeared in public with her face hidden behind a veil, she travelled extensively, and even had a double to take her place on official occasions to avoid having to attend. This is a perpetual state of affairs in women’s lives. Being beautiful is still seen as a woman’s most important and valuable trait. What happens when we all stop pretending? Historical progress has not altered that, despite the women’s movement and emancipation. Women are still considered less valuable if they're overweight or older. An attractive female partner still boosts a man’s status. The only difference between then and now is that people used to talk openly about it; 'All you need to do is be appealing'. After a certain age, women can’t win no matter what they do; they're accused of being vain if they get some work done, but people comment on their wrinkles if they don’t. That’s a particular issue for women in the public eye, like Elisabeth, but it affects all of us because they've a kind of emblematic function. In "Corsage", Elisabeth is overwhelmed by fate. Depressive tendencies are also documented in her family. She's fascinated by poetry, by Heinrich Heine’s poems. Cocaine and heroin naturally penetrate deep into the brain and alter people’s perceptions. In addition, she constantly subjected herself to a kind of slow torture, with diets and endurance sports. Everything she tries by way of distraction appears to be in vain until ultimately the empress comes to a tragic end. What was it like being a woman in 19th -century Europe? Marriage market conventions in particular exerted enormous pressure on women. Back then, if a man married outside his class, for example, if a nobleman wed a commoner, which would have been quite unusual, the bride would promptly be given a noble title. The exact opposite applied for women. If a noblewoman married a commoner, she would need to find even more money to avoid slipping down the social ladder. Just like today, a woman was also expected to be the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the best of all. And of course, everyone lost out in that kind of competitive set-up. Above all, women’s influence steadily waned as they grew older. In those days, women essentially became invisible when they turned 40. Making herself disappear was also a desperate stab at self-empowerment on Elisabeth’s part. Written by Gregory Mann

(Empire of Light • 2022 ‧ 1h 59m • Showtimes London Wed 7 Dec • The Cinema in the Arches, 3,1 km·Battersea, 22 Arches Lane, LONDON SW11 8AB, United Kingdom, 18:00) "Empire Of Light" "Empire Of Light" is a story about love, friendship, and connection, set in a coastal town in Southern England against the social turmoil of the early 1980s. Hilary (Olivia Colman), a woman with a difficult past and an uneasy present, is part of a makeshift family at the old Empire Cinema on the seafront. When Stephen (Micheal Ward) is hired to work in the cinema, the two find an unlikely attraction and discover the healing power of movies, music and community. Hilary is a middle-aged woman who lives alone on the coast and has worked in the cinema for a few years. At the beginning of the story, Hilary has come out of a mental health episode that has put her on medication. She doesn’t really feel anything very strongly. She’s going through the motions at work. She lives alone, doesn’t speak to anyone, it’s a pretty lonely existence, and she wants to feel more. She has a complicated past and some demons of her own but, in the way that ad hoc families can support each other, she has been embraced by this eccentric bunch that work in the cinema. She’s struggling to find a meaningful relationship in her life, when Stephen, who's open-hearted and gentle but still very young, also comes to work there. The story of a lost soul who finds a strange family within the cinema is not unusual. That's when Stephen enters her life. Stephen loves and adores The Specials, and The Beat, and The Selecter and all the two-tone recording artists, that particular meeting of ska and punk, which was in it's heyday. Stephen must walk through a racist world, whether it’s by a reactionary government or violent youths, but keeps true to himself as he finds an unlikely connection with Hilary, and with the cinema itself. He’s been rejected by universities and he’s at a crossroads and trying to find himself. When something like that's taken away from you, you've to find something else that fulfills you. He’s a young Black man, excited by the opportunities in life; he loves people, loves to connect with music and movies, and he refuses to allow an oppressive society to define who he's. Stephen is not naïve, the racism that he experiences is real and hurtful in so many ways, but he doesn’t let his trauma define him. Hillary is dazzled by him. She transforms, from feeling nothing, to feeling tingles. And she comes off her medication and then goes through phases to a point where she's heroic in her mania. Stephen gives Hilary a lot of optimism, a lot of love, a lot of enthusiasm, exposure to different culture and art, and his experiences. She gives him her perspective, life impression, her love of poetry and words, and just simple encouragement. She sees him. They both have been slightly ostracized from society, and that connective tissue draws them together, whether they realize it or not. It’s an exchange of energies and love. They give each other things that they don’t even know they need. Hilary has never met anyone like Stephen before, and that allows her to figure out who she's as a person as well. Norman (Toby Jones) is an old-school projectionist, it’s a very skilled job and he takes it incredibly seriously. Because he has to change reels every fifteen minutes, he pretty much lives constantly in the projection room, where he has to attend each film. What we find out is that, like many of the characters, he has found a refuge in the cinema. And it's that inspiring space, that gives him a kind of empathy or understanding of Hilary’s troubled mind. He loves film, and he’s an enigma, until he isn’t. Today, the art of film projection has largely passed to digital, but Norman is part of a time when films were projected by a skilled professional using two machines, with celluloid passing by an arclight, watching for secret signals to switch reels. Because Norman has been projecting films for decades. There’s an element of timing in it, as you switch between projectors, and of careful manipulation, how you hook up the celluloid as it passes through the projector. They see themselves as the last link in the chain. Janine (Hannah Onslow) is another worker at the cinema. She’s eighteen years old, in that in-between stage of being a teenager and becoming an adult. It’s a turning point in her life and she doesn’t really know what she wants to do, so she’s focusing on simple things, music, going out with friends and looking for a boyfriend. Like Hilary, she forms quite a strong relationship with Stephen, but she contrasts with Hilary. Janine’s whole life is ahead of her, while for Hilary, there are a lot of ‘could haves’ and ‘should haves'. Delia (Tanya Moodie) is Stephen’s remarkable and unwavering mother. While her son is first-generation British-born, Delia is an immigrant to Britain from Trinidad and her experiences with racism once in the UK caused them both great pain that have conditioned her to be distrustful of white people. For most people, their most formative period is their teenage years. The late ’70s and early ’80s: the music, the movies, the pop culture of that period generally formed who we're. It was a period of great political upheaval in the U.K., with a great deal of very incendiary racial politics, but at the same time, an amazing period for music and for culture generally, very creative, very politicized, very energized. We've.always feel the 80s were an incredibly prolific and extraordinary time in music, you had a number of different forces all coalescing around the same time. Everyone had a clique, some were floppy haired New Romantics, some were wearing their two-tone suits, some were into heavy metal, some were Goths like Janine in the movie, listening to Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure. "Empire Of Light" itself, however, is a movie almost entirely born out of the pandemic. Lockdown was a period of intense self-examination and reflection for all of us. And for us it means starting to confront these memories that we've been wrestling with since childhood. That's the spur to write, to explore those memories and to see if we can unlock anything interesting. Movies deal in mythic landscapes. You’re always looking for a point where the past becomes somehow bigger in scale, and greater in theme, and more fabled than the present. Looking back now, this period in England seems that to us one where the intersection of racial politics and music and movies was particularly special and unusual. The film wants to explore some of the ties that bring us together, the music, the movies, and the makeshift families that get us through. At the center of the film is their relationship, though they seem different in every conceivable way, they find a rite of passage that brings them both some degree of happiness and strength. In the middle of lockdown there was a racial reckoning in the world. We were left alone to contemplate how our own racial politics had been formed, and whether we had fallen down in our attempts to make sure the world was evolving. We're all worried whether the cinema was going to die, along with live performances. So, all of those things have gone into this movie, and in that regard, it’s quite raw. The politics of the period, especially the racial politics, Thatcher’s ‘there’s no such thing as society’, the racism of Enoch Powell and the National Front, the Brixton riots, the Toxteth riots, the high unemployment and extreme divisiveness, all fed into the music and the culture of the period. Those diverse bands were able to make great music whilst still being politically relevant. Songs about unemployment, and the death of the inner cities, about teenage pregnancy, and kids who had nothing to do but drink, and about Thatcher, a song like ‘Ghost Town’, for example, could go straight to number one. Those songs were part of the popular culture, and those bands were a great creative melting pot of black and white that has never quite been achieved again. There’s an extraordinary art deco glory to it, there’s a sense that it was built in the 1930s and now it’s 1980 and it’s beginning to creak and crumble. You look at "Empire Of Light" and it feels as though it’s a world away, and yet on another level, we still see the themes every day in contemporary life. "Empire Of Light" is a valentine not just to movies, but to movies as exhibited in the cinema. That little beam of light is escape, and we believe it’s a human need to escape life, to let our imaginations be released to find another part of ourselves either in books, or music, or theatre, or in this case in the cinema. Written by Gregory Mann

(Saint Omer • 2022 ‧ Legal drama ‧ 2h 2m • Showtimes London Wed 25 Jan Vue Cinema London - West End (Leicester Square), 500 m·Leicester Square, 3 Cranbourn Street, LONDON WC2H 7AL, United Kingdom, 19:45 Vue Cinemas, 3,4 km·Islingto, 36 Parkfield Street, LONDON N1 0PS, United Kingdom, 19:45 Vue, 5,6 km·Fulham Road, Fulham Broadway Retail Centre, LONDON SW6 1BW, United Kingdom, 19:45 Vue, 5,9 km·West Hampstead, 02 Centre - Finchley Road, LONDON NW3 6LU, United Kingdom, 19:45 Vue Cinema London - Shepherd's bush, 6,4 km·Shepherds Bush Gree, West 12 Shopping and Leisure Centre, LONDON W12 8PP, United Kingdom, 19:45 Vue Cinema Shepherd's Bush (Westfield),,6,6 km·Ariel Way - Westfield Shopping Centre, LONDON W12 7GF, United Kingdom, 19:45) "Saint Omer" Saint Omer court of law. Young novelist Rama (Kayije Kagame) attends the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanga), a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. But as the trial continues, the words of the accused and witness testimonies will shake Rama’s convictions and call into question our own judgement. For "Saint Omer" the obsession comes from a photo published in Le Monde in 2015. It’s a black and white image, taken by a surveillance camera, a black woman, at Gare du Nord, pushes a pram with a mixed-race baby all wrapped up. Two days before, a baby had been found in Berck-sur-Mer, carried by the waves, at six in the morning. No one knew who this child was, journalists and investigators thought perhaps a migrant boat that had drifted off course. Investigators had found a stroller in a thicket in Berck-sur-Mer, and from there, by studying surveillance camera footage, had traced it back to this black woman with the mixed-race baby. A few days later, we learn that she's a Senegalese woman, Fabienne Kabou, and she has killed her baby by leaving it at high tide on the beach. She has confessed; we listen to her barrister, and immediately the question of witchcraft is mentioned. We learn that she's a PhD student, an intellectual, the first comments from the press highlight her exceptional IQ of 150, yet she said her aunts in Senegal cast a spell on her, which would explain what she’s done. Why everyone is making such a big deal out of the fact that sees extremely well-spoken, she’s an academic after all. The trial took place in 2016. How to describe this crazy act of going to the trial of a woman who has killed her 15-month-old mixed-race baby, like the character of Rama at the beginning of the film, we walk through the city from the train station to the hotel. We feel people looking at us, people stare at me from their windows, people in the street turn away. This image which could have been of a thriller, or horror movie, is in this film. Her birth is an act of justice. An act of justice was served on everything she went through, on her entire life, not just on the murder committed by her mother. Justice was done for her. The whole film is a combination of the two women’s tears, a black woman and a white woman, each of us crying for something different yet also for something in common. To offer the black body the possibility of saying the universal. Our intimacy is not quite yet considered as being able to speak to the intimacy of the other. We've the feeling that this dialogue is not yet envisaged. The exchange is only too rarely done in that direction. There's a desire to inscribe their silence, to repair their invisibility. It’s also one of the political aims of the film. And to talk about what mothers we're made from, what baggage, what heritage, what pains. From what silence, from the void of exile, their exile, the void of our mothers lives, the nothingness of their tears, the nothingness of their violence, we tried to compose our own lives. It tries to answer questions with which all women are confronted, while simultaneously speaking specifically about one of the aspects of the history of immigration. The narrative is to record this skin, these bodies, in a place where they're still barely visible. That’s what’s contemporary, moving from off-screen to the center of the image, but with an aesthetic power. The aesthetic of the film is political. There's a connection between justice and the aesthetic question of correctness. That narrative doesn’t restore her power, including that which is more shadowy, dark, violent. Paradoxically, it’s the confrontation between this primary lyrical reading and the documentary reality of the actual trial that helped us think about our mise-en-scène on this story. In the film, the mise-en-scène replaces the lyrical dimension, allowing us to access the story, cleanse it from its sordid, listenable, unthinkable nature, it’s the mise-en-scène that allows to look into the pit of this story and to draw from it a greater knowledge, a greater understanding of ourselves, to forgive her, to forgive all mothers, all our mothers. It’s the story of Rama that makes this possible, in the identification it allows the viewer. Without her, this fictional character, it would have been nothing more than the story of a banal and tragic news item, and the film would be no better than a cinematic version of the French TV show 'Bring In The Accused'. In terms of mise-en-scène, we see a boundary between fiction and documentary. Written by Gregory Mann

"The Blackening"     "The Blackening" centers around a group of Black friends who reunite for a Juneteenth weekend getaway only to find themselves trapped in a remote cabin with a twisted killer. Forced to play by his rules, the friends soon realize this is no game. The film skewers genre tropes and poses the sardonic question, if the entire cast of a horror movie is Black, who dies first?   In the film, the group of friends reunite for a cabin weekend getaway. The friend group includes, Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), his lowkey lawyer lover and college ex-girlfriend Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) and her gay best friend Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins). The rest of the crew follows shortly after, with the reformed King (Melvin Gregg), the life of the party Shanika (X Mayo), outspoken Allison (Grace Byers) and then there’s Clifton (Jermaine Fowler), an awkward but sweet nerd. Once they all arrive at the cabin, they realize the two members of the crew who planned the event are notably missing, Shawn (Jay Pharoah) and girlfriend Morgan (Yvonne Orji). As soon as the crew arrives, they pop a bunch of Blackface (James Preston Rogers), drink King’s super sugary Kool-Aid and play a fierce game of Spades. All seems well until they start wandering through the house and they stumble into a ‘game room’ and find 'The Blackening' board game, complete with a creepy white-eyed, bright lip, Blackface 'Sambo' figurine. All the doors immediately slam shut as the group is locked in with simple instructions, Play the game or die. Terrified, the group works through the board game’s absurd questions against the clock that test their knowledge of Black culture. There are questions ranging from naming Black actors that guest starred on Friends to reciting all of the Black national anthem. Finally, it comes down to one final question, who's the Blackest in the group? Whoever is chosen, must die. The group begins trading barbs about who they deemed the Blackest. By the end of the game, the group comes to realize that 'Blackness is whatever you want it to be'. No horror movie is complete without the antagonist. In "The Blackening" there are multiple villains out to make this Juneteenth celebration a night from hell.   Phil Stevens (Omar Epps) in "Scream 2". Captain Rhodes (Ving Rhames) in "Day Of The Dead". Shelley Baum (Meagan Good) in "One Missed Call". They all have two things in common. They’re Black. They also died first in their horror movies. From the early days of cinema, Black characters were often depicted as stereotypes or caricatures, playing the role of the expendable sidekick. This is the common trope that Black characters are often the first to die. In recent years, cinema has paved the way for more complex and nuanced portrayals of Black characters in horror movies. While progress has been made, there's still work to be done in terms of representation of diverse ranges of Black characters in the horror genre and beyond. "The Blackening" does what few horror movies have been able to do. The film provides just the gags and blood synonymous with the genre. It provides also some unique comedic moments as well. It shows Black people laughing, making jokes about Black culture and celebrating it, all the while, they're screaming, crying and literally throwing up out of fear. They fight for their lives against all of the evils that threaten them for about an hour and a half. In spite of that, they also accomplish something much deeper. The film wants to show that Black people not only can handle a genre that has historically seen them as expendable, but are a most necessary and nuanced voice in the space.   We love horror movies that are a bit of a mashup, that break the genre. That subvert the audiences expectations. This movie is a spoof, it's Scary Movie. The references that the characters bring forth and the way that they see themselves in the world is really talked about. This movie is intended to be a mix of gut-wrenching comedy and gut-wrenching fear and scares. The film satirizes the Black character trope in horror films with an original take. And, while this story stems from Black experiences and characters, it's ultimately an ode to the larger horror and comedy genre. Comedy is an art. There really is truth when it comes to the technicality of it, the timing of it, how much you deliver, and the way you deliver it. The balance of horror and comedy is very difficult. Comedy just comes from honest moments. A lot of times when you're scared and afraid, you're the most honest. You don't have time to predict what something is, and these are opportunities to play comedy.   Basically what the film is saying throughout is that Black people, specifically, are not a monolith. There’s a lot of us in this and we’re all different and at the same time being the same. There may be laughs and scares in the film, but there's a clear culturally relevant message present. There are moments where we're laughing, but then you realize in life there are people of color that are dealing with extremely dangerous situations and sometimes we have to laugh at it so that you don't cry about it, essentially. This film wants to break away from the trauma and hardship often present in Black storytelling and uses comedy instead. But there’s too much focus on Black pain and struggle stories or Black biopics. We're going to put ourselves in this position to get killed. This is not what we do in normal circumstances. So the concept of it is hysterical, but obviously, there's still some dramatic elements.   "The Blackening" provides an entertaining retreat from the world’s chaos. But  the film also provides a space for the Black community in the horror space. There’s more to Black characters in horror than just being the first killed. We all speak differently. We're all from different walks of life. We have different types of humor.   Written by Gregory Mann (Opens Aug 15 at Leichester Square, 7:30 pm)

"Fremont"     Afghan refugee Donya (Anaita Wali Zada) lives in Fremont but works at a fortune cookie factory in San Francisco. Seeking connection, she decides to send a message out to the world through a cookie in this offbeat vision of the universal longing for home.   Each morning Donya eaves her tight-knit community of Afghan immigrants in Fremont, California. She crosses the Bay to work at a family-run fortune cookie factory in San Francisco. Donya drifts through her routine, struggling to connect with the culture and people of her new, unfamiliar surroundings while processing complicated feelings about her past as a translator for the U.S. government in Afghanistan. Unable to sleep, she finagles her way into a regular slot with Dr. Anthony (Gregg Turkington), a therapist, who grasps for prospective role models. When an unexpected promotion at work thrusts Donya into the position to write her own story, she communicates her loneliness and longing through a concise medium, the fortunes inside each cookie. Donya’s koans travel, making a humble social impact and expanding her world far beyond Fremont and her turbulent past, including an encounter with Daniel (Jeremy Allen White), a quiet automechanic, who could stand to see his own world expanded. Tenderly sculpted and lyrically shot in black-and-white, "Fremont" is a wry, deadpan vision of the universal longing for home.   "Radio Dreams" was about Iranians and Afghans living in the Bay Area. And "Land" was something entirely different, it took place in a fictional Indian reservation. With "Fremont" there are no specifically Iranian elements, but it's primarily about an Afghan girl who finds herself living in the Bay Area. As an immigrant or refugee coming into a new culture there a lot of times you want to be a human being foremost in order to be able to not just exist, but to have a sense of normalcy. And that's what aimed for with the character of Donya. She's a young girl, she has a traumatic past she needs to deal with, but she also has aspirational dreams. And those dreams are not about, you know, 'winning' or getting a job that pays $10 million, and calling home saying, 'Hey, ma, you know, America did sort me out. Look at me now'. It's not like that. No. Her aspirations are on a very normal, basic level. A lot of it is done in static shots.   For example, in the scenes with Donya and Dr. Anthony the film keeps the visual style pretty uniform in switching back and forth between them. Also, in the factory, the film shows the workplace, people at work, with static shots. We switched to handheld in the karaoke scene, which is a bit more dreamy, with softer movements while Donya is walking. Living thousands of miles from family and home, suddenly in a new country, starting from nothing, trying to make friends, trying to navigate through the complex immigration process to become a fully recognized U.S. citizen, none of it's easy. One thing about Donya’s personality is that she is strong. She doesn't want to share her loneliness with others, like even with her psychiatrist, Dr. Anthony. Sometimes she wants the company of other people, and sometimes she wishes she could get away. All of us are trying to find ways to do something for ourselves, and then for our people.   "Fremont" takes its title from its central setting, Fremont, California, a vibrant and diverse community in the East Bay and the most populous city in Alameda County. Fremont is situated on the historic lands of the Ohlone tribe, who were gradually displaced by Spanish missionaries beginning in the late 18th century. The area, along with the rest of modern-day California, was annexed into the United States following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848. The city itself was not incorporated until 1956, when five towns (Irvington, Centerville, Mission San Jose, Niles, and Warm Springs) joined together to form Fremont. The new city was named after John C. Frémont, the colorful and controversial figure who served variously as US army commander, California's military governor, and one of the state's first US senators. Frémont ran unsuccessfully as the Republican Party's first presidential nominee in 1856, with an anti-slavery platform and the memorable campaign slogan, 'Free Soil, Free Men, Frémont'. The city of Fremont itself has long been at the crossroads of economic opportunity and demographic change. Its proximity to Silicon Valley has brought high-tech manufacturing to working-class Fremont, the first Mac computer was built at an Apple plant in Fremont in the 1980s, and Tesla operates a major manufacturing hub there today.   Yet Fremont has also been treated as a bedroom suburb for the greater Bay Area-a calmer, quieter, cheaper alternative to the hustle and bustle of San Francisco. Until 2017, Fremont was the southern terminus for BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), the commuter train that brings Donya into San Francisco for her job at the fortune cookie factory. Fremont today is roughly half Asian, with many different communities represented, including sizable Indian, Chinese, Filipino, and Vietnamese populations. Notably, Fremont can also claim, by general consensus, the largest Afghan population in the United States, with a short stretch of Fremont Blvd. dubbed Little Kabul. The Afghan diaspora of Fremont did not settle all at once; successive waves of migration have reinforced each other, with Afghans refugees displaced by the Soviet invasion of 1979, the Taliban regime in the late 1990s, and, most recently, the withdrawal of US forces in 2021. While Fremont is a work of fiction, Donya's story reflects the social texture of a real immigrant community perched between the pressure to assimilate and the will to survive.   The film is about an immigrant in a new country but, of course, there's no uniform immigrant experience. Each individual has different reasons for leaving and each individual has their own dreams and desires for what the future will hold in their new home. Often, one’s past dictates their present and for someone starting from scratch somewhere far from home, the past is never really behind them. This film wants to look beyond the idea that there are wild differences between humans. In a world where so much is made of imagining differences and exaggerating otherness, it’s important to look at universal similarities. An immigrant and a non-immigrant share many of the same hopes, dreams and ambitions. The main character in this film, Donya, a feisty young woman and a former translator for the U.S. military, feels she's where she's due to her own life choices. But this does not mean she does not suffer or feel displaced. She is determined to change things. She wants to be busy. She wants to be at ease. She wants to fall in love. And she wants acceptance. Like most other people. Even though this film looks at the plight of an Afghan translator and her new life in America, the style of the film is not one that's rooted in social realism.   Observations of the absurdities of cultural adjustment and feelings of displacement can also be presented through the lens of humor. For although the subjects that are dealt with here can be dark at times, there's humor in darkness too. Showing humor in situations that are bleak doesn’t underplay the seriousness or depth of a story but rather, it can add layers to the sense of realism. As the saying goes,  ‘He who cries only has one pain'. But he who laughs has a thousand and one pains. There's a huge Afghan refugee population in Iran. At a certain point, Iran is home to the biggest refugee population in the world, and the majority of them are Afghans. It's always about, you know, the men and the struggles they go through, which is of course very real. But the story also mentioned the town of Fremont, which is currently home to the largest Afghan community in the United States. And some of the women openly said that for them the process of working as translators had been even more difficult because some people in Afghanistan consider them to be traitors, but also because as women they run against the more traditional elements of that society by working at all.   You know, we think trauma changes you and we think grief changes you; we think happiness, success, all these things change you in some way. But we don't think they alter your personality. We see little shifts of course, but little shifts eventually get you somewhere, wherever that may be. Don’t forget Afghanistan! People there are still suffering, they're cold, hungry and without hope. It’s an emergency. Of course, there are problems worldwide, but please keep your thoughts on Afghanistan, where women's rights have disappeared. Talk about Afghanistan with your friends. Follow the.news.(http://the.news) And support Afghans who have recently arrived in your town or city. The story is far from over.   Written by Gregory Mann

"It Lives Inside"     Indian-American teenager Samidha (Megan Suri) is feeling torn between two environments where all isn’t entirely well: home, where she’s pressured by her traditionalist mother Poorna (Neeru Bajwa), and school, where she doesn’t quite fit in and is subject to microaggressions even from her friends. Her heritage and her present collide when her childhood friend Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), who has lately been acting strange and distant, confronts her bearing a mason jar. Something lives inside that jar something hungry that has Tamira terrified. She tells Sam that the stories of demons they heard as kids are true, and Sam discovers just how right Tamira is when the thing escapes its glass captivity, invades Sam’s life, and threatens everyone she loves. Sam is desperate to fit in at school, rejecting her Indian culture and family to be like everyone else. When a mythological demonic spirit latches onto her former best friend, she must come to terms with her heritage in order to defeat it. As the dark side of the folklore Sam begins creeping into her life, inescapable both at school and at home.   "It Lives Inside" initially emerged as an image, a kid on a bike, riding through Rockwellian suburbs. It’s right out of an early Amblin film. But what if this kid is escaping a puja, her school outfit wrapped in an ornate dupatta? For us, that image speaks to the duality we feel growing up as a first-generation immigrant in America. Where do I belong? Which country is my home? Which world is ultimately mine? When you move to North America from India at the age of four, a lot of your social education comes from watching American horror films. We always wondered, what are immigrant.families doing while Bruce the shark tore through Amity’s waters, while Freddy Krueger slashed teenagers in the dreamscape, and while Jack Torrance chased his son through the maze-like halls of the Overlook!   As it developes, the film forms its own dual identity. On one hand, it is a love letter to the community and culture that raised us while on the other, it is a visceral experience that is designed to instill the same raw terror in its viewers that our favorite horror films instilled in us. It's about the expertise in elevating socially-charged dramas to thoughtful, incisive mass entertainment in films like "Get Out" and Blackklansman". As the story developed, the ideas and emotions at its core only crystallized further and are never diluted or dulled down. We believe in horror cinema. It’s the greatest genre our art form has to offer, affording artists opportunities to tell challenging, emotionally rich stories within a harrowing, affective experience.   The film asserts its importance as an Indian-American ode to the outsiders stuck trying to live two separate lives and succeeds as a crossroads between international flavors and domestic horror mindsets. Thanks to the massive success of "Get Out," the last several years have seen an influx of Black horror films, bringing some much-needed racial diversity to a predominantly white genre. Latino horror has also been going strong as ever of late. Mostly centered on white characters. The film is influenced by 'It Follows" and "The Ring". The film asserts its importance as an Indian-American ode to the outsiders stuck trying to live two separate lives and succeeds as a crossroads between international flavors and domestic horror mindsets. A good, old-fashioned creature feature in a way that feels entertaining. In offering "It Lives Inside" to the cannon, the film wants to give you a window into the lives of people we care deeply about and to make you wonder if someone or something  really is hiding in the dark, waiting to pop out of your dark, empty closet when the lights are out.   Written by Gregory Mann

"The Royal Hotel"     Americans Hanna (Julia Garner), and Liv (Jessica Henwick), are best friends backpacking in Australia. After they run out of money, Liv, looking for an adventure, convinces Hanna to take a temporary live-in job behind the bar of a pub called ’The Royal Hotel’ in a remote Outback mining town. Bar owner Billy and a host of locals give the girls a riotous introduction to Down Under drinking culture but soon Hanna and Liv find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that grows rapidly out of their control.   The film is inspired by the feature documentary 'Hotel Coolgardie'. It's the story of two young Scandinavian women trapped in an Australian mining town. This clash of cultures feels like a way into a broader discussion about drinking culture and gender dynamics. There’s a part of us that understands that pub world and a part of us that's terrified by it. "The Royal Hotel" feels like an opportunity to do that by putting the two lead characters into a remote community, exploring how these two women navigate an unfamiliar and antagonistic environment, far removed from the urban existence they're used to. "The Royal Hotel" explores Hanna and Liv's experiences within the intense and volatile setting they find themselves in, while also delving into the underlying factors that contribute to its hostility. Hanna doesn't want to be there in the first place and she's feeling vulnerable most of the time, while Liv is more inclined to say ‘lighten up, it's not that bad…it’s just the culture'. With these two characters the film shows the subtleties in the way that women respond in these kinds of circumstances. The film wants to tell this outback story, through a female gaze, to turn the tables on a genre that's traditionally been very male, and to use the masculinity of that world as the fuel for the story, and to be able to examine some of the complications around male culture, but it feels reductive.   The central dramatic question of this film is not will they get out? It’s ‘should they?’ It's a much more subtle question, because it goes to the heart of this very masculine culture and what's unacceptable within that culture. It's a film that builds slowly and inexorably to the question of should they leave. It's about the way people respond to trauma. There's one way where you can be very on high alert, very fearful, or the other way, where you just dive in and drink it all away. The ending is a provocation. It generates conversation around what's acceptable within our culture and when we should stand up for ourselves and take a stand. And it’s a situation that's all too common for young women going into environments where they've little power; where they can start doubting whether their version of reality is the real version and start being co-opted into a culture that is making them feel like they're the ones who are crazy.   "The Royal Hotel" is set in a mining town and not a farming community so we were quite specific about what the landscape should look like. Mining towns are set up to support industry and are mostly filled with fly-in fly-out workers from interstate. The film wants the set to feel normal and inviting in the way that pubs quite often do, but it feels cold or menacing. This place is a threat. While the film has nods to thriller and Western genres, it cannot be readily characterised as a genre piece. Certainly, it's like a nightmare and at times we're almost verging towards horror, but you can not describe this as a genre film. The trick of it and the balancing act within it's that you're observing real behaviours, but you're coming at it from a particular perspective and by ramping up certain key moments you're heightening tensions within it.   Written by Gregory Mann