Whilst most men would agree that giving women the vote was a dreadful mistake (put that stone down ladies…. it’s just a joke), the astonishing story behind the UK social upheaval that was the Suffragette movement is well overdue a serious cinematic treatment. And a serious treatment Sarah Gavron’s new film most certainly is: you … Read more
When I was a 10-year old kid my favourite TV programme was Gerry Anderson’s U.F.O. and my favourite EVER episode of that was one called “Survival”. In it, Colonel Paul Foster (the late Michael ‘nearly Bond’ Billington) was stranded believed dead on the moon a hundred miles from Moonbase with diminishing oxygen supplies and with the … Read more
Having just this week returned from climbing all 19,341 feet of Kilimanjaro, I find myself intimately capable of reviewing “Everest”, the new thriller from Icelandic director Baltamar Kormákur. Based on a true story from 1996, Jason Clarke and Jake Gyllenhaal play Rob Hall and Scott Fischer respectively, rival organisers of commercial climbing ventures whose businesses … Read more
“No Escape” is set in an anonymous South East Asia country bordering Vietnam facing a violent civil war, with the uprising triggered by perceived foreign imperialist intervention. The film was shot in Thailand but looks and feels like Cambodia. Having had the fortune to spend time in Cambodia and be immersed in its troubling history, this feels well … Read more
Stylish, glamorous and cool is how I remember the “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” when growing up in the 60’s, with the incomparable Robert Vaughn playing the titular “Man” (Napoleon Solo, famously named by Ian Fleming no less) and with David McCallum having a rapidly increasing presence as his Russian colleague Illya Kuryakin. I must have … Read more