Author: The Reviews Hub - Film

Writer and Director: Adrian Munsey It’s the time of year where literature takes centre stage. Perennials such as Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol are repackaged for the season. Adaptations plump out a sparse television schedule; beautiful collectors’ editions appear in bookshops. But this is more than an industry cashing in on our nostalgia: the habitual return of certain books, says something about how Christmas assembles itself in our imagination. In his Sky Arts documentary, Wonderland: The Story of Christmas, film-maker Adrian Munsey explores the relationship between books and Christmas. Unsurprisingly, he starts with Charles Dickens. The story of miserly Ebenezer…

Writers: Simon Sprackling, Mark Augustyn and Chris England Director: Simon Sprackling Has the world been crying out for a darts mock-doc? Well maybe and Simon Sprackling certainly delivers a movie that fans of this often-overlooked sport will adore. For everyone else, there is plenty of intrigue, larger than life characters and clever scene setting in Poison Arrows to keep you watching and the darts world proves fertile ground for a competition and redemption story even though Sprackling slights loses focus as the tale unfolds. Ex-darts champion Rocky Goldfingers has served nearly 10-years in prison for the alleged murder of rising…

Writer and Director: Bassel Ghandour Like the labyrinthine alleys in the old sector of Amman where the film is shot, the plot of Bassel Ghandour’s The Alleys is complex and twisty. It’s an area, we are told, which thrives on stories, rumour and gossip. It also has a thriving underworld dominated by the bullying Abbas, impressively portrayed by Monzer Rayahnah. When Abbas and his heavies turn up at local bars and hairdressers demanding protection money, the owners meekly pay up. It’s an aggressively male world, or so the exterior scenes in alleys and strip clubs suggest. But part of the…

 Directors: Terry Stone and Richard Turner The most enduring of all UK Garage tracks must be Sweet Female Attitude’s Flowers, surely etched in the head of anyone who partied at the start of this millennium.  Also holding a special space in Garage’s history is Craig David’s breakthrough song with Artful Dodger, Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta), but don’t come to 25 Years of UK Garage seeking to hear either of these songs or, indeed, any other Old Skool classic as this documentary features hardly any music at all and instead is talking head after talking head after talking head.…

Writer and Director: Alexandre O. Philippe A deep dive into the influences that have shaped the work of film director David Lynch, documentary Lynch / Oz is also a love letter to the medium of cinema itself. Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, Lynch / Oz examines Lynch’s ties to that quintessential American classic, Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz. The documentary is divided into six video essays. The contributors, including film critic Amy Nicholson, and film directors John Waters, Karyn Kusama and David Lowery, explore Lynch’s films in detail. With a career that has embraced the other-worldly and the macabre,…

Writer and Director: Geeta Malik Geeta Malik’s screenplay for India Sweets and Spices, which she also directs, draws from her experience growing up in a wealthy, tight-knit Indian American community. Central character Alia Kapur (Sophia Ali) is at UCLA, Malik’s Alma Mater. The film opens with an end-of-year party: the Social Justice Social where Alia thanks her friends for their support. It’s a good-natured affair, and the group members are suitably diverse, but what they have been doing to promote social justice, other than fund-raising money at bake sales, is left vague. A blonde friend confides in Alia that she…

Writer and Director: Atsuko Ishizuka There is a strong American influence in narrative if not the animation style of new Japanese cartoon Goodbye Don Glees! released in cinema’s this week. With its wistful reflections on the character’s youth and a decisive coming-of-age theme, classic childhood adventure movies like The Goonies and those about teenage self-knowledge, set in endlessly sunny summers come together in Atsuko Ishizuka’s debut movie exploring rites of passage, grief and the deep bonds of friendship. Friends Roma and Toto reunite as young adults, but their relationship is strained, remembering back to their 15-year-old selves and a cross-country…

Writer and Performer: Romesh Ranganathan Romesh Ranganathan returns to his hometown of Crawley to film a Netflix comedy special. It should be a big deal for the town where the comic grew up and still lives, so he cannot understand why the whole place isn’t talking about it and why his own family – mum, brother, wife and sons – aren’t more excited for him. This is the premise of the very funny 30-minute mock-doc that accompanies the release of The Cynic, an entertaining double bill that captures the hour-long show and the build up to it. Although billed as…