(Release Info London schedule; December 1st, 2018, Curzon Victoria, 11:00) "The Old Man & The Gun" "The Old Man And The Gun" is based on the true story of Forrest Tucker (Robert Redford), from his audacious escape from San Quentin at the age of 70 to an unprecedented string of heists that confounded authorities and enchanted the public. Wrapped up in the pursuit are detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck), who becomes captivated with Forrest’s commitment to his craft, and Jewel (Sissy Spacek), a woman who loves him in spite of his chosen profession. Forrest Tucker only ever has one occupation, but it's one he's unusually gifted at and pursued with unabashed joy. It just happened to be bank robbing. In the early 1980s, at a septuagenarian age, Tucker embarked on a final legend-making spree of heists with 'The Over-The-Hill Gang', a posse of elderly bandits who employed smooth charm over aggression to make off with millions. Tucker never stopped defying age, expectations, or rules; he makes his twilight the pinnacle of his life of crime. If the sole art form he knew is robbery, he's darned if he isn't going to try to perfect it, no matter how elusive the dream. He’s someone who does what he loves and gets away with it. The film imbues the story with the rollicking mythos of a modern Western. The feeling is that of a campfire tale about a simpler time; i.e. the 1980s, that last decade just before mobile devices and the internet changed everything. It's a time with less hurry and more room to hide, which makes the chase that erupted between Tucker and the lawman who pursued him a thing of slow-burning beauty both men relished. And as Forrest is chased, he too is chasing something; a last chance at love and at a legacy, even if it must be an outlaw one. But what makes this story unique is that it’s an allegory for an uncompromising artist’s soul. Robbing banks maybe isn’t the greatest choice of art form but it’s what Forrest did, so he put his heart into it. And like all uncompromising people, Forrest sacrificed a lot, in terms of relationships, in terms of what he missed and what he risked. Forrest believes that wanton violence is the sign of an amateur holdup man. The best holdup men, in his view, are like stage actors, able to hold a room by the sheer force of their personality. He's a gentleman, even if he's gentlemanly bank robber. It harkens back to almost a James Cagney type of movie, where there’s an innocence to it. Forrest is a wonderful, complicated character, so full of life and risk and enjoying danger. On the one hand, Forrest is a dreamer but on the other, he’s capable of taking great risks and he’s someone who you can trust has the capacity to go through with a plan, and trust is key in this world, We root for Forrest because we understand him as a man who wants to keep doing what does best, a man looking for love and success who isn’t ready to quit. It's Tucker’s desire to keep upping his game that draws the law to him one last time. The film touches on these deeper themes in a playful way. It's important for the film to have levity, to feel like a fun legend people tell their kids at night.   Even amid the eccentric annals of famed outlaws, Forrest Tucker is an original, a career bank robber who escaped prison 18 times and pulled off bank heists well into his seventies. The real Forrest Silva Tucker grew up in Depression-era Florida, brought up by his grandmother and raised on dime-store novels about stickup men who broke out from the social margins. He began his own life of crime in his early teens with a stolen bicycle and from then on, spent his entire adulthood in and out of prison; often breaking out of prisons, including his most notorious escape from San Quentin. Molding himself into his own version of the crime legends he’d read about, he would become as renowned for his calm, personable heist style as for amassing a total of 18 successful escapes from incarceration. Forrest Tucker passed away in 2004 at the age of 83, after serving just 4 years of his 13-year sentence for armed robbery in Texas when sent to prison in 2000. Two qualities seemed to bind Forrest; dedication to his chosen craft and an ability to tap into a boyish passion no matter their age. The end of the road is something Tucker always sought to avoid, one of the reasons perhaps he became one of the world’s greatest escape artists.   The real Forrest Tucker was married three times, but it was his last wife who saw him for who he was. The script riffs in a semi-fictional way on the character of Jewel, exploring why a fiercely independent widow might choose to share her life with a bank robber still dreaming of the biggest and best heist he might pull off. Jewel is content on her own. Her children are grown up and gone. Her husband has gone on to the other side and she lived on a ranch with all of her animals. She's very rooted and she's the opposite of who Forrest is. Forrest went whichever way the wind blew, he always has. But Jewel is just grounded and everything for her is about her relationships with both people and animals. In that context, deciding to let Forrest woo here's most of all a welcome leap into one of life’s unknowns for Jewel. Jewel is at a point in her life where she thinks, maybe it’s time for me to do whatever I want. In saying yes to this man, she's really saying yes to life. And she could do that, because she's already so independent and didn’t really need anybody to take care of her. Forrest Tucker knows he's lucky to discover in Jewel a woman who accepted his enormous flaw of being a wanted man, while falling for everything else about him. She knows who Forrest is and she knows this terrible thing about him but still, she supported him. She didn’t particularly like what he did, but she loved him for the kind of human being he's. She knows Forrest couldn’t stop, even if a part of him would have liked to. She knows, Forrest doesn’t rob banks for any darker purpose other than for the thrill of knowing he can figure it out. She gives him a place to go, a place to stop and rest his weary bones, if just for a moment, and she gives him a good friend. The film excavate the improbable nature of Forrest and Jewel’s connection; exploring why two people who seem so thoroughly unlikely as a couple on the surface match at a deeper level as two people each still looking to extract something more out of life. Sweet as things are, they both know it’s just a matter of time before the law caught up with Forrest again. Teddy Waller (Danny Glover) is a more prototypical criminal than Forrest, someone who didn’t quite have it all together. He has had a screw loose. He was in prison for 10 years, he had made a lot of mistakes and, you know, his socks didn’t  match. Forrest is much more together. He's composed and that’s why he's the gang leader. The thrill of the heist for Forrest Tucker is matched by the meaningfulness of the pursuit for the cop who decided he's going to nab him; John Hunt. Forrest is an undeniable force, able to get the bank tellers to swoon and cooperate. So John Hunt looks at him and wonders; is the way this guy lives his life an example I should be applying to myself? That’s a hard thing for a police officer to ask about a criminal. And it creates a really interesting interplay both inside Hunt and with Tucker. Hunt is kind of a lone wolf. He's discontented with the police department, so he went off and decided he’d figure this case out all on his own. But there's also something about the romance of a non-violent, life-long bank robber that appealled to Hunt. He has a kind of admiration for Forrest. Even as Forrest grows closer to Jewel, the Texas policeman John Hunt is closing in on him. But Hunt too is more a source of pride than distress for Forrest, who enjoyed being worthy of a grand chase and having an opponent to outsmart. For Forrest, that respect comes with realizing that Hunt is going to be the animal that chased him and he's going to be the animal that escaped. Hunt confesses that he did indeed have a qualified respect for Tucker, even as he sought to bring him to justice. It's a time when a cop could take his time chasing a robber, when the contest of the chase itself could overtake the finality of the capture, which is what happens between Forrest and John Hunt. In real life, Hunt never actually met Tucker face-to-face. But in the film, they've two intriguing encounters. In their first, Hunt is humiliated by Tucker when he finds himself standing in a bank line waiting to make a deposit when a stickup occurs right under his nose. From that moment, Hunt makes it his life’s mission to catch this guy, and that’s the start of a deeper connection between the two of them where they each are playing the other and pushing the other. This film is based on a story, journalist and author David Grann has written about Forrest for 'The New Yorker' in 2003, three years after the bank robbing legend been sent back to prison at age 80 for yet another cunning heist to cap off a literal lifetime of them. The internal joyousness of the character is his guide into telling the story as an almost anti-procedural, making both the crimes and the pursuit of the criminals secondary to the spirit of the storytelling. The film turns the story into two gleeful cat-and-mouse games; one the unfolding love story between Tucker and perhaps the only woman who would ever put up with his outrageous career choice; the other the story of the world-weary law 9 who decided to chase him. A few decades ago, both crime and law enforcement had a different feel. With no internet or smart phones and few computers, if police wanted to share information across state lines it was done by telephone or U.S. mail. Most cops still carried revolvers, not automatic weapons. The chase is where all the energy was. It’s always a little bit of a letdown in movies when the chase has to end, isn’t it? "The Old Man & The Gun" takes place on the cusp of the 80s, which allows the film to pay a homage to 70s filmmaking. At the same time, the film’s settings are an outgrowth of the film’s characters. The film is being more of a throwback emotionally rather than in it's style. The emphasis is on the people and it’s almost not important when and where this all takes place. It’s just that you suddenly might realize that hey, nobody has a cell phone or the internet and you’re in this world that’s a little different from the one we live in now. Super 16 has such a special aesthetic quality that immediately harkens back to 70s filmmaking. And it looks really old-fashioned. The film wants the image to feel old but also wants to avoid nostalgia. People use their imagination more. The film stuck to the physical side of everything being pre-1981. It's a colder, more sterile look, using greys, whites and primary colors, rather than everything being warm browns, woods and oranges. It’s about aspiring to the classic American dream. Western showdowns, comic capers and gritty tales of complicated cops and robbers, but all in service to a fresh take on living outside the lines. It’s a subtle, human take on a crime story, but it also has a very jazzy kind of feel. Less is always more and the film leaves audiences with mysteries and questions. "The Old Man & The Gun" pushes against all natural instincts and see how far outside our comfort zone we could get ourself.

(SCI-FI-LONDON: THE INNOCENTS, 117 mins, Director: Eskil Vogt Release Date: 20 May 2022/THURSDAY 19 MAY, 2022/ Stratford LONDON, Stratford Picturehouse, Salway Rd, London E15 1BX, United Kingdom, 20:40 Subtitled) https://www.picturehouses.com/movie-details/000/HO00011751/sci-fi-london-the-innocents?comingsoon=true "The Innocents" "The Innocents" follows Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum), Anna (Alia Brysma Ramstad), Ben (Sam Ashraf) and Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bemseth Asheim), four children, who become friends during the summer holidays. Out of sight of the adults, they discover they've hidden powers. While exploring their newfound abilities in the nearby forests and playgrounds, their innocent play takes a dark turn and strange things begin to happen. During the bright Nordic summer, the group of children reveal their dark and mysterious powers when the adults aren’t looking. The kids in "The Innocents" are ages 7 to 11, it's a special period of childhood? When you get to 12, you’re already like a tween and have one foot in the teenage years and discovering your sexuality. The film wants to look at childhood as a place before you become an adult, when it’s more fluid, more magical. When you've kids of your own, you being witness to their fumbling attempts to make sense of the world. That triggers some childhood memories in ourself. Not important memories, just random memories, and we realize how radically different you were as a kid, how strongly you felt, and how open you were and even how you experience time in a different way. The film tries to get into that space. It's also the fascination you've when you observe your kids, especially when they don't know you're there. Like you're going to school to pick them up, and you see them before they see you, and they're not like they're with you, they've a secret life. It’s hard for adults to really have that child-like approach. We try to tap into that personally. We learn from our kids. And we try to remember what it was like in the places we grew up. We remember a feeling of walking down those corridors or being in a forest. It's easy to remember childhood in a very nostalgic way, as though it was always a happy time, but it's also a very scary time because there are so many unknowns. There's so much you don't know and you've such an amazing fantasy imagination. Those things feel real, so we've never been as scared as an adult as we were as a child. And what that revealed of their imaginations and their inner worlds enriched the film in many ways. Kids are beyond good and evil or rather before good and evil. But we don't think children are little angels, that people are born pure. We think children are born without any sense of empathy or morals, we've to teach them that. That's why we think it's interesting to see a child doing something that we would call evil in an adult. The moral aspect is more complex since they aren’t fully formed yet. It’s not necessarily a danger sign, kids are experimenting when they're young and empathy evolves in different rhythms. Morality begins with your parents saying what's wrong and right, but a real sense of morality should be grounded inside you, it’s what you feel is wrong. And to discover that inner moral compass you've to experiment, you've to transgress what your parents tell you is acceptable behavior. It's those details, a hand picking at a scab, touching a grain of sand with your finger, that might trigger your own memories from childhood. The film enjoys the juxtaposition of the close ups and wide shots. Usually in scary movies you try to keep the tones down, almost black and white, and you've the shadows of darkness and white skin tones. Because it’s set in a summer, the film avoids some of the scared-of-the-dark horror cliches. It's inspired by Katsuhiro Otomo. Horror movies need to be visual and it's liberating to go in that direction because you need to have visual storytelling, you need to have iconic images, you need all that to work. Written by Gregory Mann

Whatever you do, do NOT sleep! Having problems falling asleep at night? Are you tossing and turning in bed all night? Or are frightening nightmares disturbing your well-deserved sleep? Well, in that case, I advise you not to watch “Mara“, because it could possibly get worse. Now, I myself have absolutely no problems with that and always enjoy a carefree night’s sleep. To be honest this film won’t be the cause of me lying awake in bed while staring frightened at the ceiling. In itself it wasn’t a bad movie, but I didn’t think it was too original. And certainly not scary. “Mara” is a kind of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” with a similar creature as in “Mama” who surprises certain people with a nightly visit. The reason why some enjoy this privilege is a little bland. I am certain that half of the world’s population would be eligible for this. Something unexplainable kind of explained. Yet silent about it. Kate (Olga “Oblivion” Kurylenko) is a psychologist who is called upon in a murder case. A murder case in which a wife killed her husband in his sleep. Kate has to use all her psychological knowledge to judge the suspect’s mental state. At first, it seems like Kate is a wise person who uses her analytical, down-to-earth reasoning to come to a final conclusion. But as she gets entangled in the mystery of the demon who visits poor souls during their sleep (in different stages), this intellectual attitude seems to disappear like snow in the sun. Believe me. Would I experience a few frightening confrontations with this illustrious creature, I would really believe in what those others were saying. Moreover, if I had visible evidence on video, I certainly would go to the detective who’s investigating the case to let him know what I discovered. Oh, but not our Kate. Oh no. She’s dead silent about it. No need to be scared. The fact that the succubus Mara eerily resembles the phenomenon of “Mama“, isn’t coincidental. That’s because the person who played both creeps is one and the same. Namely the Spanish actor Javier Botet. Again such a creepy, skeletal creature that walks in a staggering way. In addition to that, she also produces eerie noises. It sounds like the horrible cracking of bones. But unfortunately, she appears in the distance. In the dark, you can hardly see her. And apart from a few (very predictable) jump scares, there’s actually nothing to be scared about. I’m certain the sleep deprivation is the cause of their hallucinations. But that’s just my sober, realistic side speaking. Biggest threat? Falling asleep. No, you really can’t say this film is fascinating. There were even a few moments that it felt as if I had symptoms of sleep paralysis myself. But that’s because of the film itself. The funny thing about such films is that they always come up with a second scientist who is skeptical about the event. And even when it’s obvious that inexplicable things are happening, he approaches the phenomenon scientifically and tries to give a rational explanation for it. Apart from the phenomenal (on the physical level) acting of Javier Botet and the acceptable acting of Olga Kurylenko, it was especially Craig Conway who impressed and convinced as the war veteran Dougie, who’s fighting against falling asleep. Unfortunately, the lack of tension and the sleepwalking pace make it look rather monotonous. Are you a newbie in the field of horror, then “Mara” could make an impression. For the seasoned horror fanatics, it’s pretty sleep-inducing. My rating 4/10 Links: IMDB More reviews here

A worthy sequel for the potty-mouthed red menace After suffering a personal tragedy and hitting rock bottom, Wade Wilson (Deadpool) finds himself seeking consolation at the X-Mansion where he's reunited with Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. However, after a training mission goes badly wrong and spending time in the Icebox – a notorious mutant prison – Deadpool's priority changes. Deadpool sets about building a team of rogue mutants with the aim of rescuing Russell – a 14-year-old boy and fellow mutant – from the clutches of the brutal, time-traveling mutant known as, Cable. I had been concerned about Deadpool 2 after the news that director, Tim Miller had left the project over "creative differences" with the lead actor, Ryan Reynolds: stating he "didn't want to make some stylised movie that was 3 times the budget." I have to say, that is essentially what has happened, and something that made Deadpool the success that it was has been lost along the way. Deadpool 2 then, is another example of bigger not always being better. Fortunately, the film retains enough of its predecessor's charm, wit, and other unique qualities to get it through. The cast from the first film are back in full force: Ryan Reynolds reprises his role of Wade Wilson (Obviously - who else?) and T.J. Miller returns as Weasel, Wade's wise-cracking but cowardly friend. Fan favourites, Brianna Hildebrand and Stefan Kapicic return as Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Colossus respectively, along with a mixed bag of new mutants including the brilliant Zazie Beetz as Domino. Deadpool 2 is another strong outing for Josh Brolin in his second Marvel appearance of the year and – like Thanos before him – is able to create a truly three dimensional and sympathetic character in Cable. Overall, the cast is excellent, I enjoyed all the new characters and was thrilled to see Brianna and Stefan return. My only issue with the film (in regards to the cast at least) is that I'd like to have seen a good deal more from Brianna and Shioli Katsuna - who plays Yukio, a new addition to the cast and Negasonic's girlfriend. Negasonic was one of my favourite characters in Deadpool, but here, she never really gets involved, and Yukio's abilities are teased towards the end of the third act but never really explored sufficiently. The soundtrack and cinematography are adequate but nothing like as memorable as Deadpool and the action scenes are competently shot, although some of the larger set-pieces do suffer from the usual Marvel movie problem of looking over-manufactured. In contrast, the smaller fight scenes feel considerably more physical, concise, and enjoyable; something sorely missing from many recent Marvel releases. Verdict Whilst never quite reaching the same heights as its predecessor, Deadpool 2 retains its razor-sharp wit, deadpan humour, and proves itself a worthy sequel to one of my favourite 'superhero' movies of recent years. Deadpool 2 keeps up the tradition of its fourth wall breaking, self-referential humour and parodying of superhero genre cliches, even if it does fall into a few in the process. The cast is superb and – working off a splendid script – delivers their lines faultlessly. Where the film falters slightly is, firstly in the story, and secondly in trying to be bigger and louder than it needs to be. No-one goes to see a film like Deadpool 2 to watch something with an underlying, philosophical message about the importance of family. I'm sorry, but they just don't, and yet that's exactly what this film attempts. There's also a real fear for me that the Deadpool movies may be getting a bit too big for their boots, as they say. The first film was better for being less over the top and more modest in the scale of its set-piece action scenes. I fear that future films could soon become more corporate and lose more of what made them special; until they're just more of the same. For now at least, this will be another film to add to my collection and one I very much enjoyed seeing at the cinema. 8/10

So it's finally here! DC's Justice League is undoubtedly one of the most in demand graphic novels to be brought to life on the silver screen to join the DCU (DC Universe). After the huge success of Wonder Woman earlier this year, Justice League and the team behind it had a lot of pressure to get this film just right. Synopsis In Batman vs Superman, we saw the man of steel take his final breath at the hands of Lex Luthor's creation, Doomsday. We now see the return of Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) and Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) along with many others of the population of planet earth learning to live in a world without Superman (Henry Cavill). Crime rates have risen and people have lost all hope. Bruce and Diana soon realise that there is a much greater evil heading their way. Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds). The two heroes unite once again to seek out others to form a team so they can save the world. After all "You can't save the world alone". With some help from Bruce's butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons) and some Wayne Enterprises technology, the two heroes set out to recruit the nerdy loner that is Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) , also known as The Flash, half machine half man hybrid Victor Stone/Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and the one and only Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa), the sea king we all know to be Aquaman. Review The first thing we see in the film is a video recording of Superman being interviewed by a child asking him about being a superhero. The recorded video (filmed before Superman's demise) shows a very close shot of our hero trying to answer questions before then pausing while the camera is still rolling, leaving us as the audience to sit and focus on Superman's face while deep in thought. This is where my first critical thought came into my mind. While watching this I was sat thinking to myself "Has Superman had botox?" Yes you will probably know what I am about to say as it's been all over the internet and in a lot of articles in magazines and pretty much every other review. The terrible CGI in an attempt to cover up the actor's moustache. I'm sure many of you will know that during the time Henry Cavill was shooting scenes for Justice League, he was also bound to another contract at the same time. In this other contract he had been instructed not to shave off the moustache. So the 'brilliant' CGI team behind the Justice League were left to manage the situation. Well....They didn't. You can even see the outline of the amazing moustache if you look close enough. It did make me chuckle. I try not to critisize CGI too much in films as I know it takes a lot of hard work to be able to achieve great CGI results for films, games etc and I also know that it's something I'd be completely useless at. But unfortunately this was so hard not to miss. This awful attempt to cover up some facial hair was the one talking point that took over the entire film in all media. Which in my opinion really isn't fair. Just because the graphics in this instance may have been a bit of a blunder, it doesn't mean that the whole film was ruined. So lets discuss the heroes that form our favourite DC comics team. We had previously seen plenty of Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman from previous films (Man Of Steel, Batman vs Superman and Wonder Woman) so we already know what we feel about those actors in those roles. Personally I think those three couldn't have been cast any better. I really like Ben Affleck's Batman. When he was first cast I was a little unsure, but he is actually now my favourite version of the Gotham hero. It was great to see a lighter side to the man behind the Gotham bat, a rather amusing example of this was when meeting Barry Allen the youngster asked Wayne "So what's your superpower?" To which we see Affleck's character reply with the simple response "I'm rich." What was great about Batman/Bruce this time around was that the audience got to see much more of the bond between him and household butler Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons). The two men were often sharing scenes in the batcave working together at the helm to keep the team together and remain focused on their mission. We even saw them sharing a little banter such as Alfred commenting of the severity of the impending attack on earth by saying "one misses the day when one's biggest concerns were exploding wind up penguins" A very clever nod to the well known batman villain Oswald Cobblepot or better known as The Penguin. Justice League was completely dominated by the amazing Wonder Woman. She was awesome! I loved her in her own film and even more so in this one, not only because she was an absolute force to be reckoned with while in battle, but also because we got to see a more vulnerable side to Gadot's amazon princess. After seeing her at the beginning of the film fighting crime in a bank and working in a museum talking to a colleague saying she was doing "nothing very interesting" over the weekend, we then learn that she is afraid to lead and take charge when given the opportunity to do so. She is hiding behind a lot of raw emotion and dealing with her inner demons following the death of her love Steve Trevor (portrayed by actor Chris Pine) in her own debut film. Yet we still see Diana at her strongest in this film. Her courage to fight to protect the ones she vows to protect sees her through. She also becomes the voice of reason and takes on a mother figure role when the new recruits join the Justice League. She does so by helping them to build up their confidence to be able to fight alongside her and Batman. Particularly when we see her reaching out to new league member Victor Stone. Stone, doubts himself in many ways after being rebuilt as a machine by his father in an attempt to save his life after an terrible accident some time ago. Later on in the film Diana mutters under her breath "I work with children" which is of course, her stating the obvious lack of maturity from her 'co-workers'. As I have already mentioned him let move onto Cyborg. This version of Cyborg/Victor Stone is portrayed by Ray Fisher. Fisher is an American stage actor who is best known for his comedy role in 'The Good, The Bad and The Confused'. We saw a brief introduction to Cyborg in a small snippet of video footage within the Batman vs Superman film. Now this is the one character I was least looking forward to seeing in the Justice League film. I love the graphic novels but Cyborg is not a character I can favour. So I did have very little expectations for this character. I really was proven wrong. Fisher's version of the well known comic book hero was rather captivating, his back story is well known but it was quite emotional to see it in more depth in this film. Not only did I learn to like the character of Victor Stone but I also really enjoyed Cyborg too. We see so much more to the character than ever before with his abilities to become a computer and also a weapon. It's quite interesting to see how he learns bit by bit to control his not so human half with cannons for hands and being able to fly I think Cyborg will be an interesting hero to watch grow over time. Especially as his own solo film has now been announced. Let's move onto The Flash. Barry Allen himself. I love this character and again when Ezra Miller was cast as the scarlet speedster for this film, I did feel my mood drop a little. The only film I had seen Miller appear in before this one was the Harry Potter spin off 'Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them'. Which he was great in but wasn't The Flash that I wanted to see on the big screen. Not only that, my biggest reason for originally doubting him in this role was because the announcement of his casting was around the same time that Grant Gustin's version of Barry Allen had just hit our tv screens in the CW series 'The Flash'. I loved Gustin's version of the flash immediately and found it hard to accept someone else (Other than John Wesley Shipp) filling those speedy shoes. Again I was completely wrong about my concerns with this casting choice. It actually turned out that I thought that Ezra Miller's flash was brilliant! His version of a young, inexperienced and immature Barry Allen was just what the film and the DC universe needed. He brought a lot of the comedy value to the film with statements including him telling Bruce Wayne that the flash suit was for his extreme ice dancing hobby and shouting out rather loudly "Oh awesome, that's the Bat signal! That's your...! oh shh (holds finger to mouth) sorry, that mean's we have to go now" while talking to Bruce and Diana after seeing the call for Batman for the first time. Unfortunately this is where I have to refer to the not so great CGI. The flash's suit looked awesome and battered like it was still a working progress which was great to see. But on the other hand, when watching scenes of Miller's Flash in battle or even just running, the effects really let him down. It was pretty clear that a treadmill was used during the filming of his scenes, which yes is fair enough, but it just didn't look like much effort had been made at all in covering that up. Also I remember watching one scene where we see him running and his legs are flaying around everywhere, which was actually quite amusing but not very professional for a huge film such as this one. One other complaint that I have about the Flash was a scene was completely cut which the audience had seen in the trailer for the film. This was a scene where Barry Allen is appearing to gently touch a glass panel which then shatters in front of him due to the effect of the speed force within his body. This can be said for quite a lot of the scenes that the trailer had promised us. Many were removed from the theatrical cut. The last of our new heroes is Jason Momoa's Aquaman. Also known as Arthur Curry and the King of Atlantis. I think Momoa is great at what he does, but he does appear to be a bit of a one trick pony, playing similar roles on screen. The badass, the hard man, the one you really don't want to get into an argument with. It was great to see him speak with a light hearted american accent as he is mostly known for speaking Dothraki in his role as the very serious Khal Drogo in the TV series Game Of Thrones. I have read the Aquaman comic books and I am quite fond of them and he is nothing at all like the Arthur Curry that I know and love. The thing with this character is that he is often portrayed as rubbish or weakest member of the Justice League and I think because of this they wanted him seen in a different light for the film. A beefy, tribal tattooed, long haired ladies man type of specimen. Yes Aquaman can be appealing on the eye I suppose and he is somewhat muscular and to be honest I liked the metallic suit. I can see why they chose this appearance for Aquaman in this film because of those reasons but that does not explain the country bumpkin (sorry, not politically correct I know) phrases and mannerisms of Momoa's sea king. I mean is he a cowboy dressed as a fish or is he the king of Atlantis looking to work on a cattle ranch in his spare time? (No offence to cattle ranch workers or home owners at all, you all work very hard, but this is not Aquaman!). I really liked seeing Jason Momoa in a comedy type role in some scenes of the film, it makes a change from what we are used to seeing from him and this was great, but why on earth was he made to say "ma, maaaaan!", "Yeeeeee Hoooooo!" and "Dressed like a bat, I dig it" when seeing Bruce Wayne in his suit for the first time. It's not all negative for Mr Curry though. He shares a scene underwater in Atlantis with his soon to be queen Mera as they fight the villain Steppenwolf to protect the mother box that is hidden under the sea. I thought Amber Heard looked amazing as Mera. She looked almost identical to her animated counterpart in the books. Her character is not one to be messed with so it's good to see her warning Aquaman of the seriousness of the situation and how important it is for him to step up as the king of Atlantis. His first scene where we see him in action as Aquaman was fantastic. We see him use his trident to stop an impending flood of water heading towards the rest of the league while in a tunnel during battle. What an entrance! I am very intrigued to see how Momoa's character will develop in his own standalone feature and despite the quirks I wasn't so keen on during Justice League I actually did like the character. I may have rambled on a fair amount about our newly formed team of heroes but I can't forget the smaller characters either. As mentioned previously in my review it was great to see more of Irons' Alfred but also the return of JK Simmons as Commissioner James Gordon. Unfortunately there still wasn't enough of him though. One moment that I thought may have been significant in the film was when Gordon can be seen discussing a big case with another officer explaining that he will deal with it. Why this particular officer? Why not have it said behind closed doors? Could this be the introduction of detective Joe West? The adopted father to Barry Allen from the comics. We will have to wait and see in the Flashpoint movie. Another background character included Amy Adam's Lois Lane, a front runner in Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman but we saw a lot less of the daily planet reporter this time around. The most memorable scene we see her in is when she is brought in by Batman as "the big guns" to calm a newly resurrected Clark Kent. So the villain of this film. Steppenwolf. The god in search of his beloved motherboxes to bring them together and then destroy the planet. Voiced by Ciaran Hinds the character wasn't brilliant. He looked the part with his horns on his helmet very much like Ares who we saw in Wonder Woman. But there's not much more that I can say about him. His minions which were flying creepy looking zombie soldiers did most of his work for him in finding the mother boxes. Every now and again we'd see Steppenwolf actually fight his own battles. Plus the big showdown at the end. The only point where this villain stood out for me was at the beginning of the film where he is seen taunting the Amazons in Themyscira. And that's not for anything that he did or said, but at that point I really loved the scenes where the Amazon women are in battle with him and his flying zombies. The scenes were so thrilling and well choreographed that it really grabbed my attention. Other than that I thought that Steppenwolf was a bit of a 'meh' character. Lastly I want to mention about the films end credit scenes. SPOILER ALERT! There were not one but two end credit scenes. The first we didn't have to wait too long to see. It showed Superman and The Flash standing on what appeared to be a runway joking with each other about which one of them is the fastest. They are then seen speeding off into a blur before the scene goes black. Roll on some more credits and we get the big one! This scene I did actually know about before going to see the film and it was one I was so excited to see on the big screen. As it started I sat in my seat flapping my hands with excitement like a performing sea lion as I continued to watch. The scene starts with an officer in a prison walking up to a cell which was for Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenburg) only for the officer to find a crazy mad man in Luthor's place. We then see a boat with people on board only to then see Lex Luthor and some of his guards talking to someone about a plan to destroy our beloved heroes. And who was he talking to? Slade Wilson in full costume! Deathstroke himself! Many people have been waiting for the appearance of this character for quite some time. Particularly fans of the CW's Arrow. The TV series based on the life of Oliver Queen as the Green Arrow (played by Stephen Amell) has already seen one version of Deathstroke which is a character that many grew fond of. We have seen the portrayal of the character from actor Manu Bennett in this series so people are rather intrigued to see just how the role will play out with the casting of Joe Manganiello. Only time will tell. Lets round this up then. I really loved this film, I liked the story, the characters, the costumes and if it were just based on that I would be giving Justice League a full score of 5 out of 5. But because I was able to find a fair amount of flaws and let downs with it I am not able to give it a top score. It is definitely one that I do recommend to watch and I cannot wait to be able to own it on release to go with the rest of my nerdy comic book film collection to be able to watch it time and time again. This review is currently on my own review website https://kasimmons8.wixsite.com/therealviewroom

(Wildhood ● BFI Flare London LGBTQ Film Festival ● Thursday 24 March 2022 17:50 BFI Southbank, NFT1 ● Friday 25 March 2022 15:20 BFI Southbank, NFT3) https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Flare/Online/default.asp "Wildhood" In a rural east-coast trailer park, Link (Phillip Lewitski) lives with his toxic father Arvin (Joel Thomas Hynes), his late Indigenous mother Sarah (Savonna Spracklin) and younger half-brother Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony). When Link discovers his Mi'kmaw mother could still be alive, it lights a flame and they make a run for a better life. On the road they meet Pasmay (Joshua Odjick), a pow wow dancer drawn to Link. As the boys journey across Mi’kma’ki, Link finds community, identity, and love in the land where he belongs. When watching "Wildhood", take note that there are two parallel stories playing out concurrently. On the surface, "Wildhood" opens at the point of no return for Link. His childhood, rough and troubled. The pressures of youth have created mounting frustration and anger that he aims inwards and outwards. Link at the start of the film is an untamed wild dog, effortlessly rebellious, someone who fights to the death to protect his kin, but who can also reach into those soft gooey bits that we all have. When he discovers a collection of birthday cards from his mother that his father has hidden from him, he realizes his mother might still be alive. He knows nothing about her or her Mi’kmaw people. For him, this unknown is a path he hasn't walked, and he senses that it might be the key to finding his place. There's nothing for Link in the trailer park where he has lived his whole life. So he moves forward and 'forward' is the woods, the forest, the back roads, the rivers, the lakes. Stepping into that world, he opens himself up to a connection that's always been there, but now, because he's made space, he allows those things to come alive and that relationship with the land to exist. Burning all the bridges behind him, he and his young half-brother, Travis head out. Travis is Link's half-brother from a different mother and brings a freshness and comedy into the story because he's young enough that he can interject moments of levity into serious situations. He can also deliver with piercing truths because he usually has the wrong thing to say at the exact right time, which in the end makes it somehow perfect for the moment. There’s a protectiveness that he has for Travis, that all brothers have, and the growing importance of the relationship with Pasmay, who becomes a protector for these boys. Link meets Pasmay at the most confusing time in his life. As much as Travis is this person Link has leaned on up to this moment, he needs someone his age, at his maturity level, that he can have real genuine conversations with and that's when Pasmay appears. These are two lone wolves spotting each other, and Pasmay wants to create his own pack. That's why he continues to stick around and help Link and Travis. Walking the land is a healing process in itself. Out of that newly opened space, he meets this oddball, handsome, charming, funny guy, Pasmay, who seems like he's got it together. Pasmay knows the Mi'kmaw language, and he recognizes something in this other teenager and so offers to help because Pasmay's looking for a family of his own. And so the three, Link, Travis and Pasmay, begin to travel together. In traveling to find Link's mother, there's a sharing of hardships and triumphs which in turn creates bonds, something Link had never experienced before with anyone other than Travis. Along this journey, all the people Link encounters, from the youngest to the oldest, have something to impart, but not in the Western notion of. Gradually, Link learns something more profound; to observe, to experience and to listen. He hears many things about his mother that paints an incomplete picture that's often at odds with itself. When things are discordant like that, there must be a truth buried somewhere. Pasmay and Link are from different worlds. What they're trying to do, they can't do alone. It's hard to do things alone. In Mi’kmaw language, there’s a conjugation that reflects two people doing activities together. This would have been more common pre-contact because everywhere you went, into the woods, fishing, hunting, there would be at least two people. Pasmay is a 2S person and he knows this, while Link is someone who's moving into that space, but he doesn’t know the depth or meaning of it yet. He's beginning his journey without that connection and it can take many years. He feels fragmented and unbalanced. The common thing for all of the different characters' paths is love, it's always there, but they aren’t ready to see it. Link moves through a fog, trying to find out who he's and where he belongs. Encountering culture, language, and the land help him to heal and rediscover his sense of self, his story. It brings him into that worldview and shows him that he's related to all of the things around him. In the search for his mother, Link doesn't get everything he wants. He gets something that he needs. He gets a connection. He gets to see where he came from. "Wildhood" is a road trip film, and a buddy film. Identity and language being so deeply interconnected, the presence of Mi'kmaw dialogue in the script supports the themes of the film. When connecting or reconnecting with Indigenous culture, you better understand life because the language is descriptive. It’s through the language that the relationship between the People and the land is found and can truly be understood. The language expresses a worldview, a way of seeing things, that's different from a Western way of thinking and doing. It's at the core of importance to identity and history. The Mi’kmaw language extends back over 10,000 years and contains the stories, the land that we live on. Because Mi’kmaw culture is based on oral storytelling and oral histories. Pjila’si guides the heart of Wildhood. It’s used in modern times to mean welcome. dig deeper and the root of the meaning that’s behind it's there, come and take your place. This phrase was used when someone came visiting and could be applied when entering a dwelling, or coming to the community itself. It implies belonging, that there's a place for each of us where we fit, and it's always there, waiting. Two Spirit is a contemporary pan-Indigenous term that encompasses the Indigenous perspectives of gender and sexuality that interconnects with spirituality and cultural identity. It may include any of the terms such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer. Being Two Spirit also binds the historical collective experience into our identity as Two Spirit. It honours the duality of male/female, non-gendered, and non-conforming expressions of gender. The term can be an expression of one's sexuality, or gender, or used interchangeably. It encompasses all of that. All the characters are on a journey of self-discovery. Being Two Spirit means your very nature challenges mainstream ideas of gender and sexuality. When you don’t fit into a rigid perception of identity, there's a struggle to break free, shed your skin, and understand yourself. There's still things to unlearn and to re-learn. And there's still things to discover, but life is certainly a lot better and happier. The result room for something to grow now. And instead of a poorly potted plant in a trailer park scorched to death by the sun, this is a plant in the forest, able to grow and turn into a tree and thrive and bring something back, bring something good. As with the film, the aim of the music is to express a sense of longing for connection and acceptance, of each other, of our surroundings, of the earth, Written by Gregory Mann Wildhood - FIN Atlantic International Film Festival FIN Stream at 7:00pm, September 16th, 2021 for 24 hours.

(Regent Street Cinema, 307 Regent Street, London, W1B 2HW, ● Screening from 26th Mar) https://www.regentstreetcinema.com/whats-on/ammonite/ https://www.regentstreetcinema.com/staying-well/ (Release Info London schedule; March 28th, 2021, Curzon Home Cinema) https://www.curzonhomecinema.com/film/watch-ammonite-film-online "Ammonite" 1840s England, acclaimed but overlooked fossil hunter Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) and Charlotte (Soairse Ronan) sent to convalesce by the sea develop an intense relationship, altering both of their lives forever. In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning works alone on.the wild and brutal 'Southern English' coastline of 'Lyme Regis'. The days of her famed discoveries behind her, she now hunts for common fossils to sell torich tourists to support herself and.her ailing widowed mother. When one such tourist, Roderick Murchison (James McArdle), arrives in Lyme on the first leg of a 'European' tour, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who's recuperating from apersonal tragedy. Mary, whose life is a daily struggle on the poverty line, cannot afford to turn him down but, proud and relentlessly passionate about her work, she clashes with her unwanted guest. They're two women from utterly different worlds. Yet despite the chasm between their social spheresand personalities, Mary and Charlotte discover they can each offer what the other has been searching for: the realization that they are not alone. It's the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably. When "Ammonite" begins, we find Mary Anning slightly past her prime at this point, the days of her making huge discoveries as a leading scientist in the field of palaeontology are somewhat over, and she’s a little bit jaded with the profession. She’s been much maligned by her male counterparts. She’s looking after her ailing mother Molly (Gemma Jones) and selling fossils from the fossil shop where they live. A working class woman working on the unforgiving and dangerous sea shore in Dorset, with virtually no education, thrust into being the breadwinner for the family at the age of 11 following her father’s death, and rising to become one of the leading but totally unrecognised palaeontologists of her generation, totally self-taught in a deeply patriarchal and class ridden society. Mary is remarkably stoic. She was born into a life of poverty, lived in a class-ridden, patriarchal society, and was very much sidelined. Her achievements were taken from her by her male counterparts; they would credit themselves for the majority of Mary’s finds. But she's determined, she's very headstrong, so she didn’t change who she's as a person. She's uneducated, but she learned from her father, who died when she was ten years old; it's because of the things he taught her that she found her first ichthyosaur at eleven. She has an inquisitive mind and a vast, knowledgeable brain, this self-taught ability that she has, and that she continues to learn throughout her life, is something we truly admired in her. There’s not a huge amount of literature on her, and we don’t know very much about her personal life, but one thing that we do know is that she would give the little that she has to the poor. Among the fossils she also find items that smugglers were hiding on the beach, in the caves. In those days you were supposed to turn over anything you found of a smuggled nature to the authorities; but Mary re-hides the things that she finds and then tell the poor people where they're! There's absolutely no evidence Mary ever has a relationship with anyone, whether that be heterosexual or same sex. She has close friendships with women and in the society of the time, where women are the subjects of men and where Mary has been virtually written out of history because of her gender and social status, it didn’t feel right to give her a relationship with a man. It's difficult to be open and vulnerable enough to love and be loved, particularly if you’ve been badly scarred by a past relationship. The film explores what this relationship might mean to someone who has not only been socially and geographically isolated but who has had to close off to any emotional life, where you replace affection and intimacy with work and duty. Where you’ve been overlooked and ignored your whole life because of your gender and social class. Given this world, would Mary be able to access how she feels for Charlotte? Would she be able to let her guard down to allow the possibility of something new and wonderful to enter her life? The film is fascinated by how these female relationships could flourish in this world, a world where the medical profession still believed women had no sexual pleasure organs and still 50 years before science categorised sexual orientation and then only for men. Through lighting, the film depicts the change Charlotte brings with her into this world, how she alters the environment, bringing her own sense of light into his dark, unemotional world. Charlotte has been married to Roderick Murchison for a couple of years at this point. She lost a child, and just feels empty and a bit useless, really. At that point in history the only purpose that a woman had was to marry, keep the home and have a child; so she feels fundamentally like a failure. It’s six months on from the death of her child, and she’s still in mourning, and hasn’t come out of that depression yet. So she’s brought to Lyme Regis, and she’s left there,,and she can think of nothing worse. Roderick leaves, and she and Mary don’t get on initially. But the safety of being with somebody who doesn’t want anything from her, isn’t asking anything of her, and allows her to break down and grieve and then start to come out of that a healthier stronger person. They really help to build one another up; and so get to a place where Charlotte still has this sadness, but she can live with it, and survive it. Her relationship with Roderick is really fraught at the beginning of the film; their marriage has become quite strained; they don’t have sex anymore, and even when they did, it's probably a very functional thing. What makes Charlotte quite unique, is that she’s somebody who's quite willing to take a back seat in terms of attention or being the one to shine. Her talent comes through in putting somebody else up on a pedestal and allowing everyone to see their greatness. She’s got a great sense of humility, and she’s a very giving person. She’s someone who has been very hurt and broken, but who still has a great capacity for love anddoesn’t shy away from that at all. From Charlotte’s point of view, she just wants to be held, and to have someone close to her physically who can at least try and understand what she’s going through. He’s probably going through the same thing, but they don’t know how to articulate it. There’s so much expected of them at that time, to just keep going and pretending everything’s fine, it puts a lot of strain on them. Then they've this time apart, and Charlotte comes out a different person in a way, a stronger person. And he’s gone off and had this adventure, where he’s been able to find his passion. The relationship between Mary and Molly, it’s quite tense. Mary’s mother has a hold over her. Mary does respect her, and doesn’t want to let her down, but at the same time she's held by this life, by the darkness of this world, and that’s largely to do with her mother being stuck in her ways and scared of change. Mary’s determination to carve out her own personality whist living with another powerful woman was quite difficult, but it’s also quite funny. There are funny moments, where you see Mary roll her eyes behind Molly’s back. At the beginning of the story Mary is tired, tired of living a hard impoverished life; increasingly impatient with her mother; disheartened with her profession and with trudging out on the cold beaches. Emotionally she’s really shut down, and she doesn’t expect life to deal her any nice cards at all. So the attachment she forms to Charlotte is really interesting. She doesn’t expect to fall in love with Charlotte at all, she initially finds her a bit silly and irritating, and doesn’t want to have to look after this tiny little sparrow of an upper class woman who wears the wrong shoes and puts on lace gloves to go fossiling. But her opinion of Charlotte really does change, in spite of herself. Even though they’re from completely different worlds, what you realise is that they’re equals in many ways. They’re both looking for affection; they’re both trapped in their own worlds, for a variety of reasons. Mary doesn’t have the finances to explore the world; but Charlotte is trapped by her finances, as the quiet little wife who’s very much kept. Mary brings out a feistier side in Charlotte, and Charlotte learns things about herself she never would have known were it not for Mary. She has lost a child, so she’s grieving; through friendship with Mary, she’s able to start thinking about other things, thinking beyond the grief. Her spirits lift, she gets healthier - and that’s all because of Mary. Charlotte is inspired by Mary; she’s never seen a woman like this, a strong woman who lives alone, who doesn’t have a husband to provide for her. For Mary, Charlotte is beautiful and delicate in a way that she herself isn’t. She’s got gnarled hands, she doesn’t look in the mirror, she barely takes a brush to her hair; so there are many things about Charlotte that she finds utterly fascinating. The way she smell of perfume and nice fabrics, it’s not Mary’s world at all. There’s an intoxicating aroma that follows Charlotte, and for Mary it’s something very new, something that she’s never imagined she’d stand that close to. Charlotte in turn feels like she’s almost got to live up to Mary. What Charlotte does that really helps Mary to come out of herself, and get rid of some of that coolness that she’s carried with her for so long, is that Charlotte won’t give up. She goes in with open arms, isn’t afraid to be vulnerable with Mary, and isn’t afraid to show what her feelings for her are. That catches Mary off-guard, but she’s forced into a place where she has to do the same. The physical environment is also very important, not just the exteriors but also the interiors. This world is defined by space Mary is working class and has little money, her living environment is small, with few windows, almost claustrophobic, dark and uncomfortable. In contrast, Charlotte’s interior world is flooded with light, space to escape, in other words there's choice within Charlotte’s world. It's fascinating to see each character inhabit each other’s interior and exterior live. "Ammonite" is a really good example of how the industry is changing. It’s a symbiotic change. For Mary, she ends up letting love in; and with Charlotte, there’s a sense of pride in work, an understanding of who she's, and how not to be defined by the norms of the day. "Ammonite" is shot in a linear, chronological way. Allowing each scene to impact on the next emotionally, like building blocks within the story. This is particularly challenging but it has paid off, given the strong emotional arc that's depicted at the heart of the film. The camera movement reflects not just the landscape but also the emotional state of the characters. An investigation into how to navigate a relationship from deeply lonely, disconnected beginnings. How we learn how to love again after being hurt. How we can be open enough to love and be loved. How we can accept and forgive and learn through the power of a true, intimate connection. But the world was a very different place: people’s emotions were much more hidden, things were just much more behind closed doors; religion played a much bigger part in everyday life. Throughout the history of cinema, there’s been a real enjoyment in finding romantic relationships through real people in history, from ‘Shakespeare In Love’ to ‘The King And I’. It marks our time that we can be free and open to the idea that there could have been a same sex relationship in Mary’s life, as there might have been a heterosexual relationship. It doesn’t matter where you come from, what life you're born into possibilities are out there, possibilities are endless. Being authentically true to yourself and using your voice to be who you want to be is more important than anything else in this world. Now more than ever we’re living in a time when women are absolutely obsessed with other women and when, more than what we look like or how we feel when we walk down the street, it’s about what women have to say. Women are greater together: the more strong female voices we've, the more togetherness we show, more examples we've of great women history, the more inspired we will feel as a community to support one another, to encourage one another and to inspire one another. For years we’ve been judged; still now we’re judged. We’re questioned all the time, we’re asked to justify our choices, why we wear what we wear, why we do our hair the way we do, why we work or don’t work. We’re seeing a new chapter in the history of women. We’re seeing much more equality in the workplace. We’re at a point now in society, and politics, and art, and film, where we’re definitely being given a platform to share stories we weren’t able to before. It shows a progression, and a real acceptance about the way we're now. People throughout history have been able to find a sense of self that’s not necessarily celebrated by the patriarchy of the time; people still live their lives.

"Past Lives" (Prince Charles Cinema) Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora's.family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they're reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance.   The film, at once strikingly intimate and bracing in its scope, is broken into three parts spanning countries and decades: first with Nora (Moon Seung-ah) as a young girl in Korea, developing an early bond with her best friend, Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min), before she immigrates with her family to Toronto; then, following Nora in her early 20s as she reconnects virtually with Hae Sung; and finally, more than a decade later, when Hae Sung visits Nora, now a playwright married to an author, Arthur (John Magaro), in New York. The film has the instincts and control of an artist with a precise vision of the story's every conflicted, emotional note. The triptych that tracks Nora over the years is, in the most basic sense, about the different parts of her past. But in the film's breadth, sketching out the long arc of her relationships with Hae Sung and Arthur, and the memorable moment when they all eventually come together, the film constructs a deeply resonant and warmly generous meditation on the trajectory of a life. It's about, on a very simple level, what it's like to exist as a person. Or what it's like to choose a life that you live. More specifically, what that choice means for Nora, and what happens when the other choice, her phantom life in a sense, is suddenly staring at her through a computer screen, or across a park in New York City. It's so unfair, the devastating thing about us as people, the fact that we only have one life.   The simple, poignant tragedy in the film is also its animating idea: that choosing one life means losing another. There's a piece of yourself that you leave behind in the place you left, who like Nora, emigrated from Korea at the age of 12 for Toronto, before moving again to New York in her 20s. The moment, and the meaning and history filled in that gaze, bears a striking resemblance to the moment in "Past Lives", when Nora and Hae Sung finally see each other, in person, for the first time in years. It's like seeing a reflection of yourself from a different time. Hae Sung a hologram of a totally different existence, what could have been. The connection that Nora develops, first as a child, then over online messages and Skype sessions in her 20er, and revisits in-person later in life is, structurally, a carbon copy of what happened in Hae Sung's life. For her, the experience, one that is at some level universal for anyone who has simply moved into, say, another city or another phase of life, is especially disorienting and wistful, imbued by a distinctly diasporic longing as an immigrant who left behind her country, culture, and language at a formative age. You're not just seeing this person as they're, but you're seeing them as you remember them, which is in childhood. Nora, in other words, is her own person, rather than an idea sketched out by the binary of which man she chooses.   She's so certain about what she wants. And yet, as Nora's worlds collide between these two men, the third act eventually returns us to the bar scene that opens the film, with renewed context, if also a new, uneasy tension. There aren't any villains. But there are people who are filled with pride and people who are jealous and envious and angry, but they've to fight through those emotions. It would be a mistake, though, to read this dynamic as an early scene of a melodramatic love triangle. If "Past Lives" is a film about adults trying their best to behave like adults, no dramatic professions of love, no teary-eyed fights, no villains, this isn't to say it isn't a film that deals in sweeping emotional sentiment. One person can hold this much love, for her husband, for her childhood first love, and for herself, that's sacred. As for Arthur and Hae Sung, it's about these two men who know her, When Nora talks in her sleep, Arthur tells her at one point, she speaks in Korean, stepping into a version of herself only in her dreams. If Arthur can never know that part of Nora, there's a different, more alienating sense of absence for Nora and Hae Sung. He's here to sort of lift the veil and see that that little girl is gone. Then, Nora goes back, left to right, in the direction from which she came. She will stand there for a moment, and then she's gonna go back home, and every step is going to be a walk towards the future from the past.   You find yourself sitting at a bar sandwiched between two men from vastly different parts of your life. One is your husband, the other you childhood sweetheart. These two men love you in different ways, in two different languages and two different cultures. And you're the only reason why these two men are even talking to each other. There's something almost sci-fi about it. You feel like somebody who can transcend culture and time and space and language. It would be a mistake, though, to read this dynamic as an early scene of a melodramatic love triangle. Instead, The film turns this seed of experience into a quietly gutting film, concerned with something far more emotionally complex, the parts of a self that we lose as we become the people we're, and the ways our lives are shaped by those we love. And yet, the film is just as deeply emotional about the cosmic forces that shape our lives: if there's a bone-deep mourning over past selves, there's also the beauty in human connection, in the fact that a woman can find herself sitting with two surreally disparate parts of her lives, as if bending the rules of time and space. If there are 50 people in the room, you've 50 different reasons each of them have cried, and 50 different ways they’ve seen themselves. In all those ways of watching the film, there's actually no wrong answer, except for the one where you don't feel connected at all.   Written by Gregory Mann

"Daliland" (UK Release: /10/13/23/)     Salvador Dalí (Ben Kingsley) is one of the most world-renowned artists of the 20th century. The film focuses on the later years of the strange and fascinating marriage between Dalí and his wife, Gala (Barbara Sukowa), as their seemingly unshakable bond begins to stress and fracture. Set in New York and Spain in 1974, the film is told through the eyes of James (Christopher Briney), a young assistant keen to make his name in the art world, who helps the eccentric and mercurial Dalí prepare for a big gallery show.   The character of James is the audience’s perspective. It's the story of Salvador Dali and his wife Gala and how both of them are trying to hold onto their youth and the things that get in the way of that. It’s about the sort of people they surround themselves with and this whole world that James gets taken into that, falls in love with it and gets spat back out of. James also falls in love with Ginesta (Suki Waterhouse). But, Ginesta and James are definitely on different pages. James sees that this girl is interested in him and he falls in love. It’s really sweet, but that’s so far from how she sees it and that causes a lot of pain for James. If only he’d looked ahead, he’d have realised he’d set himself up for that one! Dali and Gala lived in a New York hotel for much of the late 1960s and early 1970s, so the film is primarily set in New York. New York in the 1970s is a place of great discovery. An exciting period, pre-disco and the beginning of punk, which was portrayed in a very different way in the US compared to the UK. Dali is surrounding himself with the movers and shakers of that time so his entourage consisted of people who were there for a purpose, they all have something interesting about them, whether they're musicians, artists, beatniks, poets, aristocrats or art buyers.   The film is primarily about Dali’s fear of death. Even though he's a remarkable genius he's also very much like us. Dali’s life and career spanned six decades. The other element the film wants to explore is Dali as an older man in New York in the 1970s, hanging out at Studio 54: He's living this very modern 70s life, yet we all think of him as a surrealist from the 1930s. Dali was quite a crazy guy when Gala met him. At that time, she was in a relationship with Paul Éluard, the writer and she had lived in a menage a trois with Max Ernst and Éluard. When she met Dali, something really extreme happened in her life. She really is very fascinated by him and she fell in love with him and she knew that this is the man to whom she would dedicate her life. Dali is a voyeur and Gala stimulated him very much artistically. He likes her passion and she completely gave her life to him, although she has other relationships, especially later in her life. She was criticized and condemned for sexual relationships with men who were much younger than she was. Gala is in her 70s in the period in which the film takes place and she didn’t like to be photographed as much as Dali. The script throws them together in this very uneasy chemistry. She's a lady who has a very strict image, she loves couture and the big designers of the time and she loves jewelry. She did more than anyone else to foster Dali’s career and more than anyone else to damage it. That’s an interesting paradox. In Púbal, in Figueres where Gala’s castle is, there’s still a lot of her jewelry, including pieces designed by Dali.   The story of Dali’s house at Portlligat, is that it's a fisherman’s hut that Dali and Gala first bought together in 1930. It was their first house. It didn’t have any electricity or utilities. They then bought the one next door which was a bit higher up and they started knocking walls down, hence the different levels which made it very quirky and recognizable. Dali’s personality really comes through, so it’s almost like the house is another part of his character. He finished work on it in 1972 so it’s like another piece of his art. The film deals mainly with the time when they're older and they've this very successful artistic life and they've built this whole world around them. They surrounded themselves with much younger people in an attempt to recapture their youth. People like Alice Cooper (Mark McKenna) and Amanda Lear (Andreja Pejic) are in their lives because both Gala and Dali loved beauty so they wanted to have beautiful people around them. Maybe the realization he has at the end is not in a sad or depressing way, it’s just reflecting on this moment in his life where he lived in this dream of a world. It's a façade as were the people he met and the life that he lived for that time. James just ends up in a moment of reflection and sort of nostalgia and it’s a moment of appreciation for the time that he had in that world.   Amanda is this fabulous woman who has this great relationship with Dali and she's in the center of that art world in Paris and London. She dated David Bowie and she was the ’It’ girl of the 1970s and 1980s",  before she becomes this sort of disco queen of Europe, like Grace Jones or Donna Summer. Captain Peter Moore (Rupert Graves) is Salvador Dali’s secretary, he did pretty much everything for him, including being an agent for his lithographs. He works on a commission basis and basically, he's part of Dali’s entourage. It’s very difficult to find out the truth about Moore because Dali is fabricator of reality, in his paintings and his life, and a lot of his entourage are also kind of fantasists we suppose. Moore wasn’t quite who he said he's, the English army Captain with the stiff upper lip. He's playing a part and we think that kind of pleased Dali who's happier with that rather than somebody who's authentic. Moore presents himself very well and is very charming, but he did some dodgy dealings, but a lot of people in the art world did dodgy dealings.   Dali is to the art world, what Almos Famous was to the rock and roll world. The glittering excesses of Dali’s fantastic circus, as seen through the young eyes of James, and the way he’s swept up into this opulent world, chewed up and spat out, until he realizes that the world’s quite a bit different than he dreamt it to be. There are many volumes where Dali is unkindly or dismissively judged. A distance that’s thrilling and terrifying, rather like a trapeze artist swinging back and forth, then suddenly the trapeze artist lets go and spins in mid-air and catches the other trapeze. It’s difficult to regulate the art world, because you’re selling people’s squiggles. Nobody knows how much they’re worth until somebody decides to pay that much for it. There’s a crossover between good and bad business practice in the art world and it’s very difficult to know where the edges are and that area can and has been exploited, even more so since Dali. It’s one of those things where you know it’s going to be special and then it happens, one of those times you’ll remember for the rest of your life.   Written by Gregory Mann

“The Royal Hotel" (Saturday 21 October, 2023, ARTS 20:35)     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

(Decision to Leave • 2022 ‧ Mystery/Romance ‧ 2h 18m • Showtimes • London Tue 18 Oct ▪ Wed 19 Oct • Thu 20 Oct • Fri 21 Oct • Sat 22 Oct • Sun 23 Oct • Mon 24 Oct Institute of Contemporary Arts, 260 m·The Mall, Institute of Contemporary Arts, LONDON SW1Y 5AH, United Kingdom, 20:45 ODEON Luxe Haymarket, 400 m·11/18 Panton Street, LONDON SW1Y 4DP, United Kingdom, 17:00 • 20:15 Picturehouse Central, 600 m·Piccadilly Circus, 13 Coventry Street, LONDON W1D 7DH, United Kingdom, 16:00 • 19:00 Curzon Soho, 650 m·99 Shaftesbury Avenue, LONDON W1D 5DY, United Kingdom, 14:40 • 18:10 • 20:40 BFI Southbank, 900 m·South Bank, Belvedere Road, LONDON SE1 8XT, United Kingdom, 14:20 • 17:50 • 20:20 Curzon Bloomsbury, 2,0 km·The Brunswick, LONDON WC1N 1AW, United Kingdom, 15:00 • 18:20 • 20:20) "Decision To Leave" From a mountain peak in South Korea, Soo-wan (Go Kyung-Pyo), a businessman, plummets to his death. Did he jump, or was he pushed? When detective Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) arrives on the scene, he begins to suspect the dead man’s wife Seo-rae (Tang Wei) may know more than she initially lets on. But as he digs deeper into the investigation, Hae-joon finds himself trapped in a web of deception and desire, proving that the darkest mysteries lurk inside the human heart. Set against a contrasting backdrop of mountains and seas, "Decision To Leave" captures the tension of a police investigation while simultaneously being focused on the changing psychology of a man and a woman. The film begins with the detective Hae-joon investigating the death of a man who fell from a mountaintop. The character is similar to the police character Martin Beck from the Swedish detective novel series. When he meets the deceased man’s wife Seo-rae, he starts to suspect her at the same time that he begins feeling an attraction to her. The wife of the man who dies on the mountain, although she's Chinese, her maternal grandfather was a Korean independence fighter, and she's proud of her family’s history and her grandfather. When her husband who loved climbing dies on the mountain, leaving her alone, she comes across the polite and clean detective Hae-joon who's in charge of her husband’s case. During the course of the investigation, she feels she's being considered a suspect. Even so, she maintains her usual upright posture and speaks boldly to Hae-joon in her Korean that's awkward, but which expresses her intentions clearly. Amidst the rising tension of the crime investigation, the film delicately captures the emotions of two characters who feel a special curiosity and unexpected affinity for each other, providing an intriguing mix of suspense and romance. In particular, the unreadable words and actions by Seo-rae make her tantalizingly hard to read, not only for Hae-joon but for the viewer as well, raising dramatic tension. As the location of the story shifts from the mountain to the sea, as their developing relationship is torn between suspicion and attraction, and as the investigation slowly reveals more details about the past, the complex, subtle emotions that tie these two characters together will leave an unforgettable impression on viewers. The film follows the emotional trajectory of two characters: the wife of the deceased man, and the detective who becomes fascinated by her. Seo-rae, who lost her husband in a sudden accident, does not show any signs of grief or agitation. The police start to investigate her as a suspect, but she never loses her upright and imposing attitude, making the audience curious whether she might really be the culprit. She does not hesitate in her exchanges with Hae-joon, even though he suspects her. And despite her limited Korean skills, her unexpected expressions and answers stymie those who question her. Seo-rae can knock her opponent off guard without ever losing her composure, making it impossible to ever know what's truth, what she's truly feeling, and who she really is. Meanwhile Hae-joon, from the moment he first sets eyes on Seo-rae, feels a subtle interest stirring in him even as his instincts as a detective tell him to suspect her. Having been recognized for his abilities and named team leader at the violent crimes division, Hae-joon stands out from other detective characters in the police procedural genre with his neatly dressed look, clean personality, and polite manner of interacting with others. A person who has never felt disturbance in the slightest, he begins to change in unexpected ways after meeting Seo-rae. Having often suffered from insomnia, he's finally able to sleep deeply. "Decision To Leave" focuses on facial expressions and eyelines to better capture the true face of the two character's emotions. With bold zooming in and zooming out to visualize the character's imagination, and unusual perspective shots that capture the sense of watching the relationship develop between the characters. In particular, such as the houses belonging to Seo-rae and Hae-joon, or the police station and interrogation rooms with their differentiated structure. Things will will not work out between them. But when they express their intention in this resolute way, from an outside perspective it doesn’t feel very convincing. They may want and agree to separate, but given that deep inside their hearts they don’t really want to part, it’s a title that suggests they won’t be able to leave each other. To Seo-rae, who has always thought of herself as being unhappy, Hae-joon is like a precious gift. She must have been taken with surprise to think, For Hae-joon, Seo-rae is like the waves on the sea. Sometimes she's calm, sometimes violent, sometimes overwhelming. Sometimes she wraps you in her embrace, but it’s always changeable. She’s a very attractive character. The always proud and faithful detective Hae-joon is so capable that he becomes the youngest officer ever to rise to the position of Inspector. He always dresses neatly, cares about cleanliness, and has a polite, kind personality, but above all, he's a person who sincerely devotes himself to catching criminals. He records all details at the scene of a crime on his smartwatch, and routinely performs late-night duty because of his insomnia. He depicts a character who departs significantly from the familiar conventions of the police procedural genre. It’s to this person that Seo-rae approaches so boldly with strong curiosity. The subtle and tense feelings that emerge between these two people, which having begun as the relationship between a detective and a suspect cannot easily reveal it's true nature, will leave an unforgettable impression on the audience. With nods toward classic Hollywood and Hitchcok’s "Vertigo", the film infuses with ingenuity and a knife-edge precision that truly cannot be matched. A blend of investigative drama, "Decision To Leave" eschews the shocking breaking of taboos in which subtle emotional tremors coexist with pulsating inner waves. "Decision To Leave" is a seductive romantic thriller that takes a renowned stylistic flair to dizzying new heights. There's not much violence, nudity or sexual content. The film’s message is expressed in a subtle way. Like the sand is soaked by the waves. Because from a genre perspective it’s a romance. There are many shots in the film that are technically unconventional and physically impossible. With it's genre mix of police procedural and it's intriguing characters, the sensual mise-en-scène, "Decision To Leave" is at once the most classic and most original film of 2022. Written by Gregory Mann (Won best director at Cannes 2022)

First it was borderline personality,then severe depression, yesterday, she said it was antisocial with schizoid tendency. She’s basically just flipping to random pages of the DSM-5and throwing medications at me. But I have a perfectly healthy brain. It just doesn’t contain feelings. There are films that aren’t much of a story and still leave a certain impression. The same applies to “Thoroughbreds” where two teenage girls, each with a specific personality disorder, come up with a plan to kill someone. The two haven’t seen each other for a long time. An eternity in which much has changed. One grew up in a rich family while the other knew a past in which the killing of her own horse played an important role. But despite the contradictions, the old friendship bond is restored. And before they know it, they are planning a murder together. Strange but true. Although it’s about a murder, it’s actually a funny and comic film. Especially because of the fascinating conversations full of dry, nonchalant humor. Sometimes it seems like the two young girls are totally insensitive people. Which is applicable to one of them. Two tasty actresses. The two main roles are played by two young actresses whose earlier performances I could appreciate. Physically they both look appetizing. Only Anya Taylor-Joy, who takes care of the role of Lily, has a more unique look with those big Bambi eyes. Olivia Cooke, on the other hand, is more the cliché image of the beautiful girl next door who’s slowly changing into a sensual young lady. The type of girl you’ve already met in countless feature films. Maybe that’s why Anya Taylor-Joy appeared in movies like “The Witch“, “Morgan“, “Split” and “Marrowbone“. All of which I enjoyed. Although I was kind of disappointed about “The Witch“. Not because of the acting. I was expecting more of a horror instead of a medieval drama. Dead serious and funny at the same time. Olivia Cooke’s acting was breathtaking and extraordinary in the film “Me and Earl and the dying girl“. A film that’s difficult to surpass. Even though her acting in “The Signal“, “The Quiet Ones” and “Ready player one” (although the emphasis was on the visual part) wasn’t so bad, the quoted film really stands out. But what she shows in “Thoroughbreds” as the apathetic Amanda, can compete with it. This was an enjoyment from start to finish. The way she plays the personality of Amanda is truly magnificent. And even though this film is meant to be deadly serious, her attitude will unintentionally cause comical situations. I bet you didn’t see that one coming. “Thoroughbreds” is such a type of film which is difficult to pin down to a specific genre. Yes, it’s indeed a crime film about two eccentric girls who are brooding on a devilish plan. And yes, unintentionally there’s also that comical approach through the behavior of the two ladies and the way they interact with each other. And wait till you see the unexpected ending which makes it all seem sinister. But if you think about it longer, you’ll agree it’s a logical outcome. “Thoroughbreds” is not exactly an easy movie in terms of genre. It is a fascinating film with the emphasis on the character and psyche of the protagonists. The fact that an intriguing and ingenious twist has been given to it only makes it more interesting. I was fascinated by the conversations. Bizarre. So if you like a well-thought-out story that isn’t simply crafted up, then you should definitely give this film a chance. And besides that, you can also enjoy Anton Yelchin, who unfortunately died in a sad accident, once more. I thought the last film he acted in was “Green Room“. But most of all, it’s the literary jousting that takes place between the two female main characters that made an impression on me. It sometimes seemed like a Shakespearean play that uses fancy words in a subtle dialogue. I never thought a conversation would fascinate me. The wonders of the world are not yet out. My rating 7/10 Links: IMDB More reviews here