Category Movies

Thomas Vinterberg serves up Another Round: BFI London Film Festival 2020

It is tempting to mix in a few drink-sodden clichés when talking about Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round (Druk), which I was lucky enough to see at the BFI London Film Festival 2020. This comedy-drama about four middle-aged Danish men experimenting… Continue Reading →

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Desperate times call for ingenious measures – especially if you’re a writer who has gone out of fashion. That’s the premise of Can You Ever Forgive Me?, in which Melissa McCarthy gives a powerhouse performance as literary forger Lee Israel. In 1991… Continue Reading →

The Favourite: royalty through the keyhole

Director Yorgos Lanthimos’s bawdy, expletive-ridden historical romp, The Favourite, often feels as though it is veering off into Carry On film territory. Centring on the love triangle between Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), and… Continue Reading →

You Must Remember This – misogyny, madness and monomania in Hollywood

I’ve forgotten where I first heard about You Must Remember This, ‘the podcast dedicated to exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century’. Despite that clunky tagline, this show, which is devised, written and presented with breathy enthusiasm by… Continue Reading →

Unman, Wittering and Zigo – anarchy in the classroom

As a rebellious teenager, I read the play Unman, Wittering and Zigo at school in the late 1970s with a mixture of relish and disbelief. Giles Cooper’s story about a class of arrogant public school pupils who threaten to murder… Continue Reading →

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a Molotov cocktail of a movie, propelled by brilliant performances from Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell. In a week when the gender pay gap has hit the headlines again, it was cathartic to… Continue Reading →

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is the film adaptation of a memoir by English actor Peter Turner about his two-year affair with veteran Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame. This movie, which stars a luminous Annette Bening opposite the excellent Jamie… Continue Reading →

Call Me by Your Name

Critics have fallen head over heels for Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name. Usually I’d be suspicious of any movie that was being lauded as “ravishing”, “triumphant” and “sublime”, but this time the hype is justified. I saw this… Continue Reading →

BFI London Film Festival 2017: Journey’s End

If you like war movies that are big on spectacle and gung-ho action, with a bit of romance thrown in, then Journey’s End may not be your cup of tea. Set in the trenches of northern France towards the end… Continue Reading →

Our Brand is Crisis

In the cinematic equivalent of a busman’s holiday, I took a break from tedium of the EU referendum to watch Our Brand is Crisis – a movie about cynical electioneering. While we’re talking buses, I should probably warn you that… Continue Reading →

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© 2024 Notreallyworking — Words by Susannah Straughan

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