REVIEW: The Personal History Of David Copperfield [LFF 2019]

As suggested by his use of its full title, Armando Iannucci is clearly a man who knows and loves his Dickens.

That might be surprising given the cynical, politically-driven worldview Iannucci is known for versus Dickens’ warm, colourful humanism, but the social issues of the Victorian era are very much in evidence today.…

REVIEW: Colour Out Of Space [LFF 2019]

Colour Out Of Space, Richard Stanley’s first film since being fired from 1996’s The Island Of Doctor Moreau, loses itself in what is, essentially, the colour of the inside of your eyelids.

The pink glow in question comes from a mysterious meteorite, which crashes down on the front lawn of the Gardner family, a bunch of city-dwellers recently escaped to rural Massachusetts.…

REVIEW: Bad Education [LFF 2019]

It may share its name with a Jack Whitehall classroom sitcom and its 2015 big screen spin-off, but Bad Education (sans the “The Movie” subtitle) is all the more troubling in the fact that it’s based on a real-life incident.

When Deputy Superintendent Pam Gluckin (a leonine Allison Janney) is found to have embezzled funds from the Roslyn school district, Superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman, clean as a freshly-plucked chicken) makes the case against the calling police.…

REVIEW: The Peanut Butter Falcon [LFF 2019]

By Rob Daniel

 

 

A contender for 2019’s best crowd-pleaser, The Peanut Butter Falcon is a celebration of friendship and adventure. A joyous movie leaving you with an aching face after ninety-minutes of smiling.

Alongside the delight is an admiration for the skill with which writer/directors Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz (under the banner Lucky Treehouse) put their movie together.…

REVIEW: Waiting For The Barbarians [LFF 2019]

Ciro Guerra’s Waiting For The Barbarians is a finely tempered adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s elegantly allegorical novel about the brutal, self-defeating ironies of colonial oppression.

The Magistrate (Mark Rylance) is, despite his grand title, an administrator, whose unobtrusive care-takingof a small nameless settlement on the frontier of The Empire gives plenty of time for pastimes.…

PODCAST: FrightFest 2019 Round-Up and London Film Festival 2019 Preview [Electric Shadows]

Episode 68 of The Electric Shadows Podcast sees Robs Daniel & Wallis look back at the Arrow Video FrightFest’s twentieth anniversary festival and run-down their top 10 films. Gems such as Rabid, The Dark Red, Ready or Not and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark all get warm words.…

PODCAST: London Film Festival 2018 Round-Up [Electric Shadows]

In Episode 51 of The Electric Shadows Podcast, Robs Daniel & Wallis looks back at the movies that impressed them at the BFI London Film Festival 2018.

Rob Daniel valiantly battles through a heavy cold to impart his movie opinion. Rob Wallis, being younger and of a generally tougher constitution, is on finer form.…

REVIEW: Dragged Across Concrete (LFF 2018 – Day 5)

If you’re into Dragged Across Concrete solely for the violence implied by its title, you may be disappointed.

S. Craig Zahler’s latest has nothing to match the groin ripping or face stomping of his first two films Bone Tomahawk and Brawl In Cellblock 99. …

REVIEW: The Front Runner (LFF 2018 – Day 4)

Ivan Reitman’s latest, The Front Runner, is an unexpectedly topical account about what we have the right to expect from our politicians – and perhaps what we don’t.

It’s 1988, and Colorado Senator Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman) seems like the ideal candidate for the Democratic nomination.…

REVIEW: Out Of Blue (LFF 2018 – Day 3)

Her follow-up to 2015’s The Falling, one of my film’s of that year, Carol Morley’s latest is a detective mystery that, for all its metaphysics, insists on covering the same old ground.

Out Of Blue opens on a dying star in the depths of space as, down in New Orleans, astrophysicist Jennifer Rockwell (Mamie Gummer) delivers a lecture on black holes, dark matter – the great impenetrable mysteries of the universe.…