Up until TV reality chef Gordon ‘effing’ Ramsey came along, the idea of working in an upscale restaurant kitchen had an appeal.  Watching the television personality scream, drop f-bombs and generally throw tantrums at the staff pretty much put an end to that daydream.  If anyone was willing to suffer the kind of treatment and […]

There’s a silent and scratchy piece of black and white historical footage that most British children saw from time to time whenever the subject of Suffragettes was in discussion in the classroom.  It’s where a woman called Emily Wilding Davison, a militant activist who fought for women’s rights at the turn of the century, stepped […]

When freelance journalist Mike Smith (Topher Grace) asks CBS news anchor Dan Rather (Robert Redford) why he went into journalism, Rather tells him it was because of curiosity.  “That’s all?” asks Smith.  “That’s everything,” responds Rather. Being curious and asking questions is what the media does, or should do, in order to get to what […]

The new comedy from director Barry Levinson is one of those films where the setup sounds funny but the execution falls listlessly flat. Rock the Kasbah, which has nothing to do with the song from The Clash other than the title, tells of Richie Lanz (Bill Murray), a lousy Californian rock manager who takes his […]

The new German drama Victoria from director Sebastian Schipper is the story of a young Spanish woman temporarily living and working in Berlin.  She finds herself caught in the middle of an early morning robbery, and it’s all recorded in one single, real-time shot. Running at a lengthy two hours and twenty minutes – a […]