The Review at the End of the Universe
A frustrated wannabe emo struggles to find himself when enrolled at a new school in Neil Triffett’s Emo the Musical. I’ll start this by saying I know next to nothing about emo culture. It wasn’t really a thing when I was at school so any knowledge I have comes from cliché ridden anecdotes that I’ve…
A gay high school student faces challenges when he is moved to an intolerant school in Trudie Styler’s Freak Show. The film follows Billy Bloom (Alex Lawther), the above mentioned gay high school student who has to find his place in the new school environment. It is made worse for him because he happens to…
A famous writer interviews men to decide who will be a suitable heir for her after she takes her own life in Zachary Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak’s Maya Dardel. This film deals with controversial issues with the most apparent being suicide. Maya (Lena Olin) has made what appears to be a rational choice to take her…
Four generations of women in a family deal with estrangement and long buried family secrets in Polly Steele’s Let Me Go. Family dysfunction is something that most of us can relate to in one way or another. It’s rife in our own families or the families of those around us so the basis of this…
A retired businesswoman re-evaluates her life after tasking a writer to come up with an obituary worthy of her as she sees herself in Mark Pellington’s The Last Word. It’s pretty clear what sort of film this is going to be from pretty much the first minute of screen time. Harriet (Shirley MacLaine) is an…
Stanley Tucci spends some time behind the camera as writer and director of a small period of time in the life of eccentric Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti. Taking place over a matter of weeks, this film is all about how Giacometti is seen through the eyes of the subject of the the portrait that would…
Rupert Jones directs his brother Toby Jones in Kaleidoscope; a thriller about isolation, madness and broken relationships. Carl (Toby Jones) lives alone, has little in the way of possessions and lives his life with very little human contact. Initially we see that he has a close friendship with his neighbour Monique (Cecilia Noble) but that…
A quest to lose his virginity becomes deadly for a man and his friend when two beautiful women are more than they seem in Benjamin Barfoot’s Double Date. The movie follows Jim (Danny Mogan) and Alex (Michael Socha), two friends that are very different from one another. Jim is shy, a little awkward and has…
With Pilgrimage director Brendan Muldowney (Savage, Love Eternal) has managed to gather together a very impressive cast for a story that might have some difficulty in finding an audience, and that is a crying shame as this is an excellent piece of work. Set in 13th Century Ireland it tells the story of a small…
A solitary woman starts to take stock of her life after finding herself an accessory to a violent incident in Peter Mackie Burns’ Daphne. The title character lives and works in London and has isolated herself from the rest of the world for reasons that she doesn’t really understand herself. She’s bitter and angry at…
