A Private War (2018)

I don’t know about you, but I have always found the process of watching the news to be a very dissociative one. Coming of age in the aftermath of things like 9/11, the majority of foreign reporting and correspondence has long been a deluge of tragic, horrifying scenes that feel a million miles away from…

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

If there is one thing I know about Barry Jenkins, it is that he is a filmmaker with an incredible talent for bringing nuanced, delicate and different portrayals of the black experience to the big and small screen. From the Best Picture Academy Award winning Moonlight to an episode of Netflix’s excellent Dear White People,…

Boy Erased (2018)

You know how the world of cinema tends to offer up conveniently timed little series of films that, although not directly related, seem to share a sensibility and companionship in terms of theme and subject matter? Well, the tail end of 2018 going in to 2019 offered once such series up in the shape of…

Green Book (2018)

If you were going to come up with a film that spoke to all of the historic preferences of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, then you would most likely end up with something that looks like Green Book. Period setting? Check. Race relations theming? Check. Previous Oscar winners and nominees? Check. Inspired…

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

Growing up watching Gilmore Girls, I never thought for a second that there would come a day when I would venture in to a movie theatre to watch a film for which Melissa McCarthy has a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Not that this is her first nod, of course. From Best Supporting Actress praise…

Destroyer (2018)

In the midst of Oscar season, it is easy to forget that there are more films to catch than just the ten or so big hitters that are deemed ‘unmissable’ by the Academy. Though I’ll obviously get through all of the nominees before the big night, it’s also nice to walk in to something that…

Vice (2018)

Looking back on it, it’s probably fair to say that my first memories of American politics in any real sense came during the years of the George W. Bush administration. Being born in 1989, Bill Clinton was pretty much a guy who was mentioned in the Animaniacs theme and a guy who did something naughty…