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Maybe it’s time for someone like me… to come over there and wipe that smug grin off your face. You know what’s fun sometimes? Haphazardly starting a film without knowing what it is about and afterward admitting you were pleasantly surprised. That’s my experience with this film. A film with a bit of suspense and tension. And thanks to the short playing time you don’t have the feeling it was a waste of time. Even though it isn’t a blockbuster. It’s also the first time that I didn’t feel sorry for the two teenagers Sam (Gregg Sulkin) and Brady (Garrett Clayton). In this movie, these two spoiled, annoying brats reap what they have sown. And the whole time I was expecting the rest of the gang to pop up suddenly and announce it was all one big joke. Extremeprank calls. Like many others, I found the two main actors irritating. But then you have to admit their acting was masterful. Because wasn’t that the whole point? After all, they are two obnoxious young boys who pull pranks on others. They make extreme prank calls. The only thing I couldn’t believe was the fact that those pranks were watched so massively after posting them online. Is that a reflection of what our society is evolving into? A society where gloating is self-evident? A mid-level psychological horror. “Don’t hang up” is a low-budget film. That’s noticeable. Everything takes place mainly in the parental home of Sam. The camera work is uncomplicated but to-the-point. Besides a camera moving through the set in a penetrating way, it generally looks mediocre. It gets bloody in this film, but the used “practical effects” don’t look spectacular either. And yet this film was worth a watch and can easily be added to a whole series of other films from the same mid-level. Yes, I have gloated. Because of the short playing time, the pace is swift in this movie and you don’t have to wait long before the unwanted caller turns up. And still despite the pace, one manages to increase the tension gradually. The sinister caller has a rather frightening voice (a Jigsaw-like tone), which in turn makes it extra creepy. His technological omnipotence was slightly exaggerated though. And despite the fact that it’s about pretty arrogant and unsympathetic youth, I found the friendship and expression of sacrifice commendable. But all in all, I couldn’t avoid to gloat and a convincing inner “Yes!” resounded at the end. My rating 6/10 More reviews here

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

(Release Info London schedule; February 21st, 2020, Curzon Soho, London W1D 99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1D 5DY, 6:45 pm) https://film.list.co.uk/listing/1425630-vivarium/ "Vivarium" Gemma (Imogen Poots), and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg), a young couple, are in search of the perfect starter home. When their mysterious local estate agent (Mark Quigley) informs them of a new housing development, somewhere between suburban 'Ireland' and 'The Twilight Zone, the enigmatically named 'Yonder', they ignore their initial reservations and decide to check it out. In a quiet neighborhood, he leads them to house number 9 and disappears. Soon, they realize that they're in an infinite space filled with identical houses, and that any attempt to escape will lead them right back to number 9. But this cautious couple should have listened to their instincts, quickly finding themselves unable to escape the seemingly endless maze of picture-perfect streets. As the weeks pass, they're forced to accept that they're trapped inside this manufactured utopia. Then, one day, a surprise package is about to arrive at their doorstep with a baby boy (Senan Jennings) inside. Invoking both the mind-bending weirdness of a classic Tom discovers that the soil of 'Yonder' is made from a seemingly artificial substance. He starts to dig a hole. He becomes obsessed. Digging makes him feel as if he has a purpose, but the hole just gets deeper and deeper. Tom hears noises at the bottom of the hole. He digs further. Tom’s physical and mental health deteriorates further. Tom attempts to harm the boy, but Gemma intervenes. Gemma attempts to understand the couple’s predicament by engaging with the boy. She discovers that he's incapable of imagining things. Tom’s emotional distance pushes her closer to the boy. One day the boy vanishes, only to reappear with a strange text book. Gemma asks the boy who gave him the book. To show her, the boy takes on a disturbing physical form. Time has passed. Gemma and Tom have grown weaker. The boy (Eanna Hardwicke) has grown into an adult. Gemma and Tom reunite in their fear of him. The boy leaves the house every day and Gemma and Tom do not know where he goes. While digging, Tom finds a withered corpse in a body bag. Tom weakens to the point of death. Gemma begs the boy to help. The boy provides them with a body bag. Tom dies and is flung into the hole. A vengeful Gemma attempts to kill the boy. He escapes into a bizarre, subterranean corridor. Gemma follows and tumbles through parallel homes where other young couples live lives of similar despair. Gemma is spat back out into number nine. After a final act of verbal defiance, Gemma dies. The boy buries her in the hole with Tom and leaves 'Yonder'. He becomes an estate agent, replacing Martin (Jonathan Aris). The idea of owning your own home has become like a faery tale. Insidious advertising promises ideal living, a fantasy version of reality that we strive towards. It's the bait that leads many into a trap. Once ensnared we work our whole lives to pay off debts. The social contract is a strange and invisible agreement that we flutter towards like moths to a flame. Natural areas are destroyed to make way for rows of identical houses, mazes for an atomised society to live out their days. We eat processed food wrapped in plastic. Media competes with parents to set strange new agendas in the minds of children. The dream of owning a home can soon turn into a nightmare. Consumerism is consuming us. "Vivarium" is fed on these ideas. It amplifies and the ordinary through a sci-fi lens. It's a surreal and twisted tale that's darkly humorous, sad, frightening and weirdly satisfying. "Vivarium" is a surrealistic, dark, but humorous film that lures us into a unique space and captivating experience. It's an eerie portrait of domestic life that poses questions of class and gender roles, even as it sucks the audience into it's hellish suburban maze. The nightmarish jaunt up the property ladder is as thrillingly provocative as it's wickedly enjoyable. Audiences get a kick out of it and it lingers in the mind.

(The Banshees of Inisherin • 2022 ‧ Drama/Comedy ‧ 1h 54m Showtimes London • Fri 21 Oct, Sat 22 Oct, Sun 23 Oct, Mon 24 Oct, Tue 25 Oct, Wed 26 Oct Thu 27 Oct, ODEON Luxe, 400 m·24-26 Leicester Square, LONDON WC2H 7JY, United Kingdom, 12:00 • 14:45 • 17:30 • 20:15 Leicester Square, 400 m·Leicester Square, LONDON WC2H 7NA, United Kingdom, 12:30 • 15:10 • 17:50 • 20:30 Vue Cinema London - West End (Leicester Square), 500 m·Leicester Square, 3 Cranbourn Street, LONDON WC2H 7AL, United Kingdom, 12:45 • 15:30 • 17:45 • 19:45 Picturehouse Central, 600 m·Piccadilly Circus, 13 Coventry Street, LONDON W1D 7DH, United Kingdom, 13:00 • 15:35 • 18:10 • 19:15 • 20:45 Curzon Soho, 650 m·99 Shaftesbury Avenue, LONDON W1D 5DY, United Kingdom, 12:00 • 15:40 • 17:50 • 21:20 ODEON Covent Garden, 800 m·135 Shaftesbury Avenue, LONDON WC2H 8AH, United Kingdom, 14:30 • 17:30 • 20:30) "The Banshees Of Inisherin" Set on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland, "The Banshees Of Inisherin" follows lifelong friends Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) and Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), who find themselves at an impasse when Colm unexpectedly puts an end to their friendship. A stunned Pádraic, aided by his sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon) and troubled young islander Dominic (Barry Keoghan), endeavours to repair the relationship, refusing to take no for an answer. But Pádraic’s repeated efforts only strengthen his former friend’s resolve and when Colm delivers a desperate ultimatum, events swiftly escalate, leading to disastrous, anarchic consequences. “The Banshees Of Inisherin" is the story of an island, the small group of people on that island, and two friends who early on in the film are forced by the decision of one friend to go their separate ways. The other friend finds that particularly hard to deal with. The story opens with Pádraic walking happily around the island of Inisherin where he lives with his sister, Siobhán. Pádraic is a sweet, mild mannered, happy-go-lucky guy. Every day, Pádraic and Colm meet at 2pm to go for a drink in the only pub on the island. It’s a daily routine. On this particular day, however, everything changes. Colm ignores Pádraic when he calls. Colm starts acting very strangely and starts avoiding Pádraic. Colm doesn’t answer the door, which is how we start off the journey. That’s how it begins, with the shutting of a door against a good friend, for no apparent reason. Pádraic is initially surprised, then shocked, and eventually heartbroken. He’s also confused, since Colm has given no particular reason for the breakup. These two men have been friends for their whole lives..Why did Colm torpedo his friendship with Pádraic, was it something that Pádraic said, or did? Is Colm depressed? Should he respect Colm’s wishes and back off? Or should he try to change Colm’s mind or change himself? Within the first six minutes of the movie, the plot is in place. Pádraic can't understand why Colm doesn't want to be friends with him anymore and won't accept it. It’s similar to the feelings you feel when you've been dumped in a relationship. You think, ‘So did you ever like me, or was I imagining that we were in love'? We've to .understand the tough line that Colm, the breaker-upper, has taken, or do they identify with the nice person who's broken hearted. But Colm has his reasons. He doesn’t want to waste his time anymore. He wants to devote himself to artistic enterprises, music or thought. Pádraic is the fallout from that decision. Until this point things have been easy going. But Colm is older than Pádraic by 15 or 20 years. Colm identifies that time is precious and he sees Pádraic as a waste of time. It's a.smart way of playing with those feelings that everyone has in terms of a loving couple, heartbreak and rejection, but doing it with friends so there's a comedy element to it. Colm decides to embrace art and creativity as the most important thing in life and it leads to hellish consequences. The Irish Civil War was a tragedy, that’s the context here. Through examining it and trying to understand how things can get dragged out of shape, maybe we can face it down and not take that path. Do you devote yourself totally to life as an artist? Is work the most important thing? Does it matter who gets hurt in the process? It's a debate that isn't answered by the film. As Pádraic continues to prod Colm for a response, the situation escalates. Colm comes to a place where unless he does something very drastic, he's not going to be left alone. He threatens to cut his fingers off unless Pádraic leaves him alone and allows him time to create. Colm is curious in his mind and he’s a little bit intense. He reckons he has 12 years left, for no particular reason. He’s not ill but he knows his time is finite and he wants to leave a legacy. His art becomes his main priority. Colm’s quite sophisticated in his mindset. It’s a bit like a nuclear deterrent. Symbolically, he’s threatening to destroy his own gift of musicianship. Colm sees it as a badge of commitment. Pádraic shares a home with his younger sister Siobhán. It's coming up on eight years since their parents have died, so there's nobody else living here, apart from Pádraic’s miniature pet donkey Jenny, who Pádraic keeps sneaking into the house. They're close as siblings, so when Colm shuns Pádraic at the start of the film, Siobhán is perturbed. Siobhán is, perhaps, the wisest voice on the island. She realises the limitations of this community. It's inward-looking and resentful attitudes will eventually drag her down. She has ambitions that extend beyond the island, but she's also acutely aware that Pádraic needs her. Siobhán has been through a lot and so there's this sadness and loneliness to her. She's stuck. Pádraic drives her a little crazy, like a sibling would, yet she's motherly to him. She calls things out in the way that probably only a woman can. Her voice, wisdom, and enormous heart take you beyond the island and in a new direction. Colm’s artistic dilemma is reflected in Siobhán, whose life is consumed by reading, cooking dinners, and loneliness. Colm, perhaps, represents a struggle that Siobhán may find herself in within a few years. However, what's taking place on Inisherin, the division between Pádraic and Colm, and the growing rifts with other people on the island, mirrors what's occurring on the mainland. There are allegorical aspects to the division between both sides in the Irish Civil War. Then the islanders become involved. There's Peadar Kearney (Gary Lydon), the local cop whose dislike of Pádraic and his sister intensifies after his separation from Colm. Dominic Kearney (Barry Keoghan), the policeman’s son, is another person who's affected by this schism between the two men. Dominic is smart in his innocent, childlike sort of way. He has feelings for Siobhán, but she's the only girl for miles. Dominic bears a lot of that sadness and horror, as a lot of kids did in Ireland in the last century..The fictional island of Inisherin has a single pub run by Jonjo (Pat Shortt), whose best friend Gerry (Jon Kenny), is normally in residence. The pair provide a brilliant commentary on Pádraic and Colm’s declining friendship and subsequent duelling. Jonjo isn’t a mediator, but he tends to be there when some of the key moments happen. The pub is a major character in the story. It's yellow, bright. It has a red floor, which is an old oilskin from a sailcloth, and a black ceiling. These are strong colours for a period film. It's a multi-character piece and there are many strands that go through the story. Colm is the only character who wears a coat. The coat is light enough to blow in the wind and has elements of the American Western. There’s discord and madness, loss and suffering, and some laughs along the way. There’s something rotten in the community. All the characters are bananas. They're mad in their own unique ways; archetypes brought together to create a certain amount of chaos, but not chaos for the sake of it, and not just dark moments or themes to titillate and shock. The film is set in 1923 when Civil War was raging in Ireland. The fictional island of Inisherin is not affected but there's tension across the water on the mainland. Cannon roars and gunfire can be heard some nights and so we're very aware on the island that there's a civil war taking place. But we're also kind of shielded from it by virtue of being out of the way and a coastal outpost. The Irish Civil War was waged from 1922 to 1923, following the War of Independence and the establishment of the Irish Free State, which created an entity in one half of the country that was separate from the United Kingdom. Two opposing groups, the pro Anglo-Irish Treaty provisional government, and the anti-treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA), fought for dominance. They're not bothered about the war. It's like they're a separate little country, a separate little everything. The civil war was a catastrophic fallout that can emerge from a struggle for freedom. In the case of the Irish conflict, brother would be cast against brother, and friend against friend. Historically, it ended in horrific atrocities. The film does not adhere to the strict boundaries of history. Instead, it is it's own self-contained fantasy, a mythical place, a streak of madness permeating it's bones. The period setting of Banshees, 1923, leant itself to the idea of a Western. Shooting through doorways and that kind of John Ford-ian trope is something we explore in the storyboarding. The story lent itself to this idea of two almost lone gunmen falling out and getting into tiffs at the local saloon. The explorations of fidelity, separation, loneliness, sadness, death, grief and violence. Violence begets violence. The story is dark enough anyway, but the film wants the visuals and the locations to be as cinematic as possible. The mountainous geography of the island impacts the story. These looming mountains have a lot of tragedy behind them. It’s been informative, in terms of the broadness of Irish life. Everything is a little bit shabby and sad. The scale of this movie is massive. Filmmakers don’t usually try to send an audience away sad. But that's part of it, a about Ireland at that time and maybe about life. Written by Gregory Mann

Having worked beside KSI covering media for all his Misfits & DAZN Boxing events and having had several closed door conversations with the human rotating door of professions, I was always intrigued the origin of his mindset and how he maintains it indefinitely in the public eye. When I heard a documentary detailing exactly this was debuting this month, it went straight to the top of my watchlist. As the documentary opens, it very quickly reminds you how long it has been in development – since June of 2021, over two and a half years. The timeline is somewhat chronological. While it follows JJ through 2021 and 2022, the documentary retains the freedom to jump forward and back in time to provide context to the current storyline; one such example is the representation of the genesis of the KSI character. I say character, as the film makes sure to depict JJ Olatunji and KSI as two distinct entities: JJ Olatunji is the real, aspirational KSI is the fictional alter ego created by JJ to portray a confident, funny character to win over the internet. As the life of KSI becomes more appealing, the lines between the two individuals get blurred. These benchmarks in JJ’s life allow the documentary to split into three key moments that are spliced together: the origin of KSI, the merging of KSI and JJ Olatunji, and the separation of the two identities. All the important relationships of JJ’s life are put on display. While some are kept private out of personal choice (such as that with his girlfriend), they are still featured in some regard, and their significance in JJ’s journey are still reflected. One that shines in the one-and-a-half-hour feature is JJ’s elastic relationship with his brother, Deji. As most prospective viewers will know, the Olatunji brothers have had a bumpy relationship - they were very close at the start of their YouTube journeys but fell out heavily as their YouTube personas overshadowed the real people behind them. The film has the pair explain in their own words how and why their relationship fell apart and the slow process they embarked on to rebuild it. This is a topic that I was highly anticipating an examination into and is one I think many will be satisfied with. The documentary features deep moments with the Olatunji family, and doesn’t shy away from challenging topics, informing viewers of the many struggles their family went through. Even his parents openly discuss the severe mistakes they made in raising their sons, including their use of physical abuse, and their reasons for doing so, and current regret. The portrayed upbringing of JJ is one I anticipate a lot of viewers will relate to – something I was surprised was so similar to my own. The lives of other people important to JJ’s life and the effect he had on them, good and bad are front and centre. Each of these figures provide their insights into JJ and has them explain why they believe he’s been so successful and what they believe he lacks in his life. What is perhaps the strongest positive I can surmise for the feature, is that despite being a documentary about KSI, the film doesn’t shy away from painting JJ in a bad light at times. It provides a strikingly honest portrait of JJ and how other perceive him and the KSI alter ego. This documentary doesn’t have the typical production value of a TV documentary. The Prime Video budget and care from Mindhouse Productions really shines through the cinematography of the feature, as it’s shot more like a traditional film than a documentary; this extends to the aspect ratio, which adopts the theatrical “letterbox” approach rather than the adapted-for-TV “widescreen” format most documentaries have – this awards the film a larger than life feeling that is fitting to the ambitious and ever-expanding persona of KSI. Even the structure of the documentary deviates from other documentaries in true Louis Theroux fashion. If you’re a fan or are merely interested in the pop-culture personality of KSI, I strongly encourage you to spare an hour and a half to traverse the mind of JJ Olatunji. KSI: In Real Life is an exploratory journey in time that explores sensitive and private topics with full force and uses emotional fragility to its strength. It is an honest and intelligent biographical tour that forces all doors open in the mind of the man behind the internet persona KSI. KSI: In Real Life debuts Thursday 26th on Prime Video. Watch the trailer below:

(London Film Festival, October 8th, 2019, BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XT, United Kingdom, 18:10 pm) https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=guestofhonour&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id= "Guest Of Honour" Jim Davis (David Thewlis) and his daughter Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira), a young high-school music teacher, attempt to unravel their complicated histories and intertwined secrets in "Guest Of Honour", a film that weaves through time exploring perception and penance, memory and forgiveness. A hoax instigated by an aggressive school bus driver Mike (Rossif Sutherland) goes very wrong. Accused of abusing her position of authority with 17-year-old Clive (Alexandre Bourgeois) and another student, Veronica is imprisoned. Convinced that she deserves to be punished for crimes she committed at an earlier age, Veronica rebuffs her father’s attempts to secure her early release. Confused and frustrated by Veronica’s intransigence, Jim’s anguish begins to impinge on his job. As a food inspector, he wields great power over small, family-owned restaurants. It’s a power he doesn’t hesitate to use. While preparing Jim’s funeral, Veronica confides the secrets of her past to Father Greg (Luke Wilson) who may hold the final piece of this father-daughter puzzle. "Guest Of Honour" is a twisting morality tale exploring the complicated relationship between Jim, and his daughter Veronica, a young high-school music teacher, and the past that haunts them both. As the film weaves through time, scenes from the past catch up to the present, illuminating dark secrets. Jim is a food inspector working in a multicultural city. For him, each establishment is a potential hazard. He has the power to shut down restaurants not observing health codes. It’s a power he doesn’t hesitate to wield. Part of Jim’s weekly ritual is visiting his daughter in prison. Having confessed to abusing her position of authority as a music teacher during a high school band trip, Veronica rebuffs her father’s attempts to secure an early release. Confused and frustrated by his daughter’s intransigence, Jim’s anguish begins to impinge on his work. Scenes from the band trip gradually reveal that Veronica and Clive, one of her senior students, turned the tables on Mike, their aggressive bus driver. Their prank spirals out of control and becomes the basis for the charges brought against Veronica. Over Jim’s visits with Veronica, it becomes clear that there's another history at play. Veronica is using the prison sentence to punish herself for earlier transgressions. When she was a young girl, Veronica believed that her father was having an affair with her music teacher. Tragedy unfolds, in which Veronica is implicated, but was never held responsible. As a teenager, she confessed to the teacher’s son, with devastating consequences. Having lived with these secrets for years, Veronica has found a unique way of serving her penance. Jim doesn’t seem at all aware of his daughter’s true history even though he finds himself increasingly implicated in the compelling revelations of Veronica’s personal narrative. Father and daughter move towards a resolution, which is brought to a brutal halt when Jim dies. As she prepares for Jim’s funeral, Veronica confides in Father Greg (Luke Wilson) who may hold the final piece to the puzzle of the past. "Guest Of Honour" is a disturbing and compelling study of perception, memory and forgiveness. As a food inspector, Jim has the power to close a restaurant down, and while he uses this authority to determine other people’s destinies, he desperately tries to understand his own place in the world. Jim’s relationship with his daughter is obviously highly complex, that’s what the film is about. Realizing that the story really begins there, with the death of the mother. Jim is left on his own from then onwards, the fifteen intervening years between Veronica as young girl and Veronica as a woman. We've to understand what Jim so much loved about Veronica as a woman, a woman who’s gone off the rails, a woman who now baffles him, a woman who seems absolutely so incomprehensible in terms of her motives. And seeing that little girl playing the piano, the whole story becomes clear. Of course, there are sub-plots and various metaphorical issues and symbolism and storytelling, but it’s about a man trying to communicate with his daughter, trying to communicate the love he has for his daughter. That's utterly relatable in terms of how so many young people can get lost somewhere between adolescence and early adulthood, in all kinds of things that maybe one wouldn’t anticipate in their earlier years and can be catastrophic. It’s a terrible thing that’s happened really. One of the Jim’s characteristics is this sense of power he wields as a food inspector which may sound a rather banal job description. It doesn’t evoke wonderful images of this is a fascinating character we want to get to know until you really go down that hole and see what the issues are with food inspectors, and what a power-complex this man has. Simply, he can wreak havoc on people’s lives, close down family businesses with the flick of a pen-based on opinion or perfidy. He starts to abuse his power and manipulate his occupation to his own ends. But he’s rather delusional. He sees himself as some saviour, as some campaigner for health and safety, health and cleanliness, the health code is his bible and it takes him over. We've a backstory where he started a restaurant and that seems to have been scuppered by what happened to Veronica. He has to walk away from that business because of the vicissitudes of Veronica’s life and whether he holds some resentment there's another thing to be discussed. Maybe he’s doing this job as some kind of revenge. Now he enters a restaurant with the power to destroy the business, the lives of the owners. His vocation is taken away from him, and now he can visit the same fate on others. There are many levels to this film, you keep discovering. His daughter Veronica is a young music teacher who's passionate about her craft. But, she also carries trauma that bleeds into her relationship with her father. The film explores the complexities of family life. How family can absolutely make you or absolutely break you or both at the same time. The vast breadth of feelings, the turmoil those feelings cause! Music is very important to Veronica, it’s her source of joy and we’ll see in "Guest Of Honour" that she’s not always happy all the time so it will be nice to see the moments where she's lost in her music. She believes that she has found a way to a strange sort of peace in her life, until that is challenged by revelations of a past she never fully understood. She’s a character who’s broken, who makes impulsive, self-destructive decisions. We see her joy in music and we see her dark pain as well. With incarceration, she’s found a way of medicating herself. But it’s not sustainable and then something unexpected happens, which transforms her life. The character who holds the key to this past seems to be a priest. Father Greg is a Texan who's transplanted to Canada, The biggest mystery in the film is whether the food inspector Jim, in asking for his eulogy to be performed by this particular priest, has somehow planned an emotional reconciliation he could never have achieved with his daughter in life. Father Greg is an unusual priest. He knows about Veronica who’s come to see him to arrange a funeral for Jim. As he talks with Veronica to learn details for the eulogy, Father Greg comes to understand that he knows a great deal about her narrative. But he’s bound by oath not to share his knowledge. He breaks his word because, he decides, it's critical for Veronica to understand her father. Rather than see her continue to suffer, living with false assumptions, Father Greg renounces his pledge. As viewers, we can locate ourselves in this very complex narrative in terms of how he sets himself within it. Father Greg has an unexpected front row seat to Veronica’s story. Father Greg is one of those characters that’s woven throughout the story, Not quite a narrator, and not the protagonist, but a figure that intersects with the different characters. In that way, he knows all of the people that the audience meets, at different times and in different situations. And often times, as we find out, he knows these very personal parts of some of the characters’ histories. Father Greg’s character is a way for the audience to keep up with the storyline and these characters whose lives interrelate. You've these imperfect, interwoven characters and then there’s the priest who’s something of a psychiatrist, or a psychologist, or a doctor, somebody that people go to and share their personal stories. “Guest Of Honour" is an emotional investigation of the bond between a father and a daughter. Their history has been rocked by events that neither fully understands. They’re both in a suspended state for much of the film, trying to understand the nature of their connection to one another. There’s a very clear sense of time passing in this film. While we understand from the beginning that their physical relationship has ended with the father’s death, the details of their past are evealed in a form of psychological autopsy. The film finds a cinematic way of allowing the viewer to inhabit they particular world the characters are trying to navigate. The film explores what might be called the emotional chronology of Jim and his daughter, Veronica, a way of measuring their complex feelings. While the structure of the film is non-linear, it's actually based on a simple recounting of the scenes as they flow into the characters’ minds. While the situations specific to Jim and Veronica are extreme, the parent/child bond will be very familiar to audiences. The film creates a sense that for Jim and Veronica the scenes all play in a continuous and sometimes shocking sense of the ‘eternal present’. The film itself becomes a sort of machine through which the characters come to an understanding of what they mean to each other. "Guest Of Honour" is a story told through glass. Apart from the actual glass of the camera lens, which displays the way in which images of the past can be refracted and refigured, there's a literal use of a glass musical instrument woven through the film. The use of glass as a distorting lens, as well as a material which allows the process of creative expression, is an important motif in "Guest Of Honour". The soundtrack wows in unexpected ways, as the characters come to terms with the complexity of their lives and the exoticism of their relationship to their own pasts. Every child feels their parents made mistakes, certain ways in which the parent did not express love, or pay the right sort of attention. Those moments reverberate through our lives in sometimes painful ways. "Guest Of Honour" covers such a wide range of time, you get to see the evolution of specific characters, which is very exciting. Our family has been around us for our entire lives, they’re everything we know. Sometimes we project our feelings onto them, sometimes we feel their words are hurtful, but that’s what having a family is all about. The film ends with an unexpected reconciliation.

(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)