When director Paul Greengrass released his 2002 film Bloody Sunday, a re-enactment of the ‘72 shootings in Derry, Ireland, it was the first time movie-goers were exposed to his faux documentary style of storytelling. Shot entirely with a hand-held, the end result was raw, urgent, and genuine. It was as if the director and his […]

If this was based on a John Le Carre novel with a setting in eighties East Berlin, and principle characters were either undercover spies or double agents, then the tone would be bleak, low-key, with most of the dialog taking place in hushed tones on park benches or in half-lit back alleys. Even if it […]

In his previous award-winning documentary, Cartel Land, director Matthew Heineman presented a terrifying picture of the Mexican Drug War. Throughout, there was a continuing sense of peril, an all-encompassing feeling of total discomfort that at any moment something threatening would lash out and harm those on camera, perhaps even the filmmakers themselves. In his new […]

When director Leslie Norman completed and released his 1958, 135 minute epic war film, Dunkirk, the time from the actual event was a mere eighteen years. Most audiences in those British theatres were only too aware of the story’s time-frame, the causes, and the outcome. Many were even survivors of the horror, those who had […]

Sci-fi fans have long suspected it was probably the French science fiction comic series, Valerian and Laureline that inspired Star Wars. At least, in part. The dates certainly suggests it could be so. The comics began in a magazine in 1967; more than enough time for a space opera to ferment before a fully-fledged Luke […]

“Is there something there?” It’s the middle of the night. Seconds earlier, a young husband and his wife were lying peaceably in bed in their recently purchased ranch house. Then came the noise; a distinctly loud noise. It sounded as though the wires of the old piano in the living room were just slammed. Definitely […]