BFI Flare 30: Akron (2016)

When Benny (Matthew Frias) and Christopher (Edmund Donavon) meet playing a friendly game of football during downtime at college, they quickly fall for each other and start dating.  Yet as their college finals approach and they prepare for a spring break trip to Florida, a secret from their past involving an interaction between their families creates a seemingly insurmountable wedge between them…

BFI Flare 30: Who's Gonna Love Me Now? (2016)

When Saar moved from Israel to London 17 years ago to escape his religious families disapproval of his gay identity, he quickly found love in a stable relationship with the man of his dreams.  Yet as this relationship suddenly broke, he moved into the ‘scene’ and dated a new guy more into hard drugs, money scams and parties.  One day his new man arrived at his door with the ultimate bad omen – an HIV diagnosis.

Saar with the LGMC

Saar then found the London Gay Men’s Chorus, a place where he could share his story and be accepted as an insider instead of the foreigner running from his orthodox family and native Jewish culture.  His family feature heavily – both parents come to visit him in London, as well as Saar travelling to his “home” – and clearly love him, but are disgusted and fearful at his ‘choice of lifestyle’ and ‘dangerous disease’. 

Film Review: Bridge of Spies (2015)

In 1957 Brooklyn, New York, reclusive amateur painter Rudolph Abel (Mark Rylance) is sat in jail accused of being a soviet informant after having his home raided by the FBI.  After refusing to put up a fight, he awaits his trial and is introduced to successful law partner James B. Donavon (Tom Hanks), who has reluctantly taken his case. 

The prosecutors, his law-firm partners, the public and even the judge all want Donavon to lose the case, yet after the inevitable guilty verdict, his strong belief in fair representation and the constitution convince him to appeal the conviction and spare Abel the electric chair.

Meanwhile, Francis Gary Powers an American pilot is shot down over the Soviet Union during a secret U-2 spy mission at the same time as an American economics student finds himself on the wrong side of the newly erected Berlin Wall.  Donavon has shrewdly predicted this eventuality and begins to negotiate a prisoner of war swap between the two super-powers. 

Film Review: The Hateful Eight (2016)

Some time after the end of the Civil War, John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his stagecoach driver O.B. are travelling to the town of Red Rock, Wyoming with Ruth’s latest bounty: the notorious fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). A couple of fortuitous happenstances and a roaring blizzard quickly ensure that the ride becomes a lot cosier due to fellow bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), and supposed new Red Rock sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) hitching a ride.

The fierce weather prohibits them for reaching their destination overnight, so they decide to stop at Minnie’s Haberdashery for respite and warm stew.  Yet already in residence at the small lodge are the enigmatic cowboy Joe Cage (Michael Madsen), elderly Confederate general Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern) and the new Red Rock hangman Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth).

What follows is an inevitably Tarantinoesque pressure cooker of narcissists, paranoiacs and sociopaths having to spend time in a room together slowly discovering the motivations and machinations that will build to a bloody climax… 

Film Review: Mad Max. Fury Road (2015)

Nuclear holocausts have been a staple of discouraging cinema for decades, yet somehow they just seem so… fun.  The thought experiment of what would arise from the ashes of Mutually Assured Destruction has preoccupied filmmakers since only a few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and yet the apocalypticaphilia continues to perpetually reinvent itself.

More of an alternate reality offshoot than a sequel, Mad Max: Fury Road reinvents the franchise with Max (Tom Hardy) being captured by the War Boys – the neo-steam punk army of local tyrant Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) – and taken back to The Citadel to be used as a “blood bag” for the sickly driver Nix (Nicholas Hoult). 

Meanwhile, loyal lieutenant Furiosa (Charlize Theron) has re-routed a routine gasoline mission in the armored War-Rig, into becoming a maverick escape for Joe’s five specially selected breeding ‘wives’.  On hearing of the betrayal, Joe sends the War Boys – including Max strapped to his Nux’s car for blood transfusion – after the truck and his prized childbearing wives. 

Film Review: The Martian (2015)

After a team of scientists and explorers, led by commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain), are hit by an unexpectedly large storm on the surface of Mars, they must stage an emergency evacuation.  Yet on the way to the module, botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is hit by a communication antenna and left behind presumed dead.  He then quickly has to figure out a way to survive for multiple years for a rescue mission in a habitat designed to last for 30 days and “science the shit out of” his terrifying dilemma.

There’s an old philosophical thought experiment about five passengers riding an out-of-control tram on a rail line approaching a cliff next to a track-switch with a second line with a sleeping man laying on it.  Should you pull the lever and save the five even if it means killing the one?  What is the ethical price of a human life?  The Martian is an extended meditation on that very question, with a whole harmony of other themes of solitude, determination and survival.

Film Review: Brooklyn (2015)

In 1952 Enniscorthy in southeastern Ireland, young Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) works weekends at a small corner shop run by the nasty and spiteful evangelical Miss Kelly (Bríd Brennan).  Hating her job, yet finding no better, she agrees to a new life in New York City set up by her sister Rose and émigré Father Flood (Jim Broadbent).

After making the uncomfortable journey across the Atlantic, with the help of her more experienced bunkmate, Eilis ends up in an Irish boarding house in Brooklyn under the watchful eye of her landlady Mrs Kehoe (Julie Walters) and protective, yet intimidating, fellow Irish immigrant residents.  She gets a job at a department store, yet fails to impress her supervisor Miss Fortini (Jessica Paré) and her homesickness only begins to subside when she meets a local Italian-American called Tony… 

Film Review: The Big Short (2016)

As you will all no doubt remember, in 2007 the financial world had a little bit of a cataclysmic meltdown due to the reckless behavior of some money men on Wall Street.  A lot of white men in suits had created some difficult financial mechanisms that included hundreds of thousands of mortgages, which could be traded and repackaged and traded and repackaged and traded and repackaged…and as long as the house prices kept going up, everyone was happy.

Yet in 2005, an outsider hedge fund-manager and blogger called Michael Burry (Christian Bale) discovers that a huge amount of these mortgages are at risk of default (or ‘subprime’), and are in fact likely to lead to a massive reversal in fortune for the investment banks.  This idea resonates with a number of other maverick financiers, such as the exasperated Mark Baum (Steve Carrell) and shady trader Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), who were willing to bet big against the housing market:  The Big Short.