“Sometimes a blind pig finds a truffle”. One of the joys (and stresses) of the run up to the Oscar weekend is to try to catch all the major award films before the big event. As I bitched about in my BAFTA write-up, UK release dates do NOT make this an easy task, with some … Read more
The Last Post. In “Fences” Denzel Washington plays Troy – a bitter, self-centred and selfish man in his mid-fifties who loves the sound of his own voice. They say “empty vessels make the most noise” and here is a case in point. Set in the early fifties, race plays a strong card in every aspect … Read more
Will Win/Should Win/DID Win It’s that weekend again and time for the BAFTA Film awards 2017, taking place on Sunday February 12th in London and compered again by the inimitable national treasure Stephen Fry. Once again, I will stick my cinematic neck out and declare who I think WILL win; the nominee that I would … Read more
In God, and Doss, we Trust. Those dreaded words – “Based On A True Story” – emerge again from the blackness of the opening page. Actually, no. In a move that could be considered arrogant if it wasn’t so well researched, here we even lose the first two words. When a war film is described … Read more
Jewry Trial. It’s the mid-90’s and Deborah Lipstadt (Rachael Weisz, “The Lobster“), an American professor of Holocaust studies at a US university has written a book naming and shaming David Irving (Timothy Spall, “Mr Turner”) as a Nazi-apologist who denies that the Holocaust ever happened. Filing a law suit against Penguin Books and Lipstadt in … Read more