REVIEW: Mangrove [LFF 2020]

In what has become something of an LFF tradition, Steve McQueen’s latest gets the festival off to a strong, socially-aware start.

It’s 1968 and things are changing in west London. Kids play beneath a towering overpass under construction and in Notting Hill a new restaurant, the Mangrove, provides a hub for the West Indian community.…

PODCAST: London Film Festival 2020 Preview [Movie RobCast]

In episode 101, Robs Wallis & Daniel take a look at the films getting them fired up for the 64th London Film Festival.

Predictably. this year the festival is split between showing films on the BFI Player and certain films screening in cinemas across the country.…

REVIEWS: Widows (London Film Festival 2018 – Day 1)

A bedroom embrace is wrenched away and instantly replaced with the rear compartment of a getaway van, one door wrenched off its hinge and sparking on the asphalt, as a lover’s playful snarl becomes the shriek of a bullet, ricocheting around the exposed interior.…

12 Years a Slave is a stunning and necessary reminder of the insidious evils of slavery

 

12 Years a Slave is the tale of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejifor), a free black man and professional violinist in the mid 19th Century northeastern United States who, in 1841, was kidnapped and sold into slavery.

The third film of Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave feels, from the off, like a more mature approach to “the problem” of slavery than either of its two most immediate predecessors.…