Here at university procrastination is a pass-time we students have down to a fine art. Be honest – how many times have you said “Just one more episode” and then found yourself halfway through a box set of The Walking Dead? We’re now in the era of video on demand, getting whatever we want, whenever we want it with sites such as Netflix and Hulu, along with HBO getting its own VOD service in the USA.

But the main thing that has always put me off is the prices. I don’t particularly want to pay £15 a month for movies and shows I don’t want to watch. What if I don’t watch anything that month and I’m charged? Well that’s when I found out about curzonhomecinema.com. With this site you only pay for what you want to watch. No hidden charges. Plus there are hundreds of indie movies all just a click away. On Curzon Home Cinema I found a film that I have been desperate to see for a while now but couldn’t find anywhere: Man On Wire.

Man On Wire is a documentary following French tightrope walker Phillipe Petit who on August 7th 1974 walked across the near 200ft gap between The Twin Towers. Directed by James Marsh who also directed the Oscar winning Theory of Everything looks at the life of Phillipe and the careful planning leading from the inspiration behind his ambitious plan, to the dangerous act itself.

Throughout the picture we cut between the planning of the day and the actual day itself, slowly building itself piece by piece into one big picture. These broken up segments give great tension to the already suspense filled tale, and the heist-like setup is almost too bizarre to believe. The sit down interviews with each of the people involved give both an emotional and compelling narration to this already captivating story, all of which is topped off with photographs, footage and re-enactments from both the planning and day of the walk, giving this picture a very intimate feel.

The broken up segments does have its downside however. I kept finding myself trying to remember what was happing at certain times as new characters are introduced with back story and insightful commentary on what happened, only to be dragged back to the day of the walk. It made the film feel a little disjointed at times but not enough to detract much from the story.

Overall I loved this documentary. The interviews and footage kept me glued to the screen with some jaw hitting the floor moments such as Phillipe lying down in the middle of the two towers on just a wire. It can have you slightly confused about what happened before but this is only a minor nitpick to a great documentary. And with Curzon Home Cinema offering it for only £2 (which you can watch for 48 hours as much as you like), there really is no excuse to miss Man On Wire.

If you’d like to watch this, or any film from Curzon Home Cinema‘s Mavericks and Vanguards collection, we’ve partnered with them to give you 25% off film rentals for that collection until 22nd May. Use CRZSHEFF25 at the payment option page. 

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was a hit film in 2012, starting some of the best names in British acting such as Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy to name a few, as well as starring Dev Patel. The film was a hit and showed audiences that growing old wasn’t the end, it was the beginning of something new and exciting. Now with the sequel out, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (I can’t decide if the title is stupid or brilliant), the film adds some new characters, portrayed by Richard Gere and Tamsin Grieg.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel story revolves around Sonny (Dev Patel) the owner of the hotel as he tries to expand his business and open more hotels to accommodate new arrivals, all of this while at the same time trying to plan a traditional Indian wedding, setting up a story filled with chaos.

What I can say about the acting is that everyone in this film delivers, just like the first film. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is filled with A list British talent that always do an amazing job no matter the role – Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Bill Nighy perform perfectly, and Dev Patel (though I haven’t felt he’s been great in other films recently) delivers a strong performance, much like he did in the first film. And not to forget Richard Gere who fills his role nicely alongside the other actors.

The biggest problem this film has is that the story is nothing new – it’s very much a sequel to the first, and was most likely only made due to the financial success of the first film. There’s nothing original brought to the table, and while it’s not a bad film, it’s very likely that if you enjoyed the first you’ll like this one, and if you didn’t then you won’t. If you haven’t seen the first there’s very little point in watching this one.

Still Alice, based on the novel by Lisa Genova and co-directed by the late Richard Glatzer and his partner Wash Westmoreland, follows the story of Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) as her life deteriorates after being diagnosed with familial early-onset Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 50. Alice is forced to come to terms with the words that hang in front of her, just out of reach, and the missing pieces of her life after her successful career as a linguistics professor.

Unfortunately, the plot is perhaps too focused on Alice – this sadly eliminated the potential for much character development in other members of the Howland family, and lacks focus on their experience and how they themselves came to terms with it. Alice’s Husband (Alec Baldwin) often seemed cold through Baldwin’s wooden acting, and whilst showing a range of almost convincing emotions, her youngest daughter (Kristen Stewart) lacked a certain something, although that may have been intended to come across as teenage angst. All of this said, however, it is easy to acknowledge why Moore won the best lead actress Oscar for her portrayal of Alice, becoming the 5^th recipient of the award in a row to have played a character with a mental health illness. Moore’s transformation throughout the film is unfaultable, although perhaps with a few changes in the direction and plot structure of the film, she may have shone to a higher potential. At times scenes seemed far too long, unexplained, and repetitive, whilst others were too short and missed potentially important details that may have solved some of the aforementioned flaws – perhaps this was a metaphor for the nature of the disease that did not come across quite as intended.

The sad news came on the day of writing this review of the passing of co-director Richard Glatzer, who had been facing his own battle with Motor Neurone Disease since 2011. Glatzer should be seen as an inspiration, for creating a film about such an epic struggle whilst facing his own. Glatzer was unable to attend the Academy Awards ceremony where Moore paid tribute to him as he lay watching the awards in a hospital room.  Today, Moore simply tweeted, “I love you Richard”.

The Alzheimer’s society has praised the film, calling it “beautiful, frightening, and powerful”, whilst featuring the women behind the film in their campaign “our brains”, which aims to promote awareness and raise funds for research into Alzheimer’s in women. Perhaps the release of this poignant film, and the recent news of the death of acclaimed author Terry Pratchett (a long time sufferer of the disease) will lead to new wins in Alzheimer’s awareness, and help drive it into the forefront of medical research.

The Wolfe brothers’ début is an astonishingly dark string of events collected together inside one relatively experimental work of art. Catch Me Daddy tells the story of Laila (Sameena Jaben Ahmed) and her boyfriend Aaron (Conor McCarron) who have fled home in a fit of passion to the wild expanses of the West Yorkshire moors; Heathcliff and Cathy in a caravan park.

The opening few minutes of the piece jump back and forth between various characters, almost giving the impression that we are moving through time, while simultaneously affording the film a dreamlike quietude before the storm. The horrifying reality of the way in which these characters are linked soon reveals itself: the passionate but fundamentally murderous Zaheer (Ali Ahmad), Laila’s brother, has joined with three other British-Asian men and has paid the utterly terrifying Barry (played by first-time actor Barry Nunney) – who clearly has white supremacist undertones – and the sullen Tony (Gary Lewis) to help track Laila down and bring her home to her oppressive, patriarchal father, with the implication of honour killings underpinning every scene from the moment the connection is made.

In something of a dual critique, Catch Me Daddy at once criticises the empty, amoral greediness of western capitalism by its explication of the horrific acts it can drive people to, and also – more blatantly – honour killings undertaken by strictly religious families operating under a perverted strain of their particular faith. Those who are most vulnerable in both societies suffer most, sometimes horrifically, and it is no accident of course that Laila is placed at the centre of this; a film which exposes the totality of a particular kind of sexism (perhaps ‘patriarchal dominance’ would be more accurate here). Laila is seen as a property by her father, her brother, and their gang of thugs, and as a commodity, a way to earn money, by the white drug dealing gang members who agree to help them find her.

The atmosphere of the film is almost tangible, and certainly its realism shines through, particularly because, for the most part, it was shot in West Yorkshire (where it is set) with Rochdale in Greater Manchester providing additional bleak urbanity to the hills. These hills preside over the action just as Laila’s father does, a constant background presence, twisting and turning events to his benefit. He’s an unseen antagonist, but one around which the entire film centres – the men searching for Laila and Aaron acting as his outstretched arms getting tantalisingly close, ready to catch hold at any moment.

Starring Maika Monroe and Keir Gilchrist, It Follows is the story of Jay (Monroe), a teenage girl who is perpetually followed by a threatening supernatural entitynafter sleeping with her boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary). Before disappearing on her, Hugh informs Jay that it can take any form that will allow it to get close, and that it will never stop following until it kills her – the only way to get rid of it is to pass it along by sleeping with someone else. This leads to Jay being on the run from the monster whilst her childhood friend (Gilchrist) and a few others (Daniel Zovatto, Olivia Luccardi and Lili Sepe) try and come up with a way to break the curse.

The overall story of the film is very minimal, and only seems to exist to link together set piece moments, but that isn’t entirely a bad thing. The simplicity of the story is reflected in the concept of the monster chasing her – it has no motivation, or even a specific form – it just follows. The director (David Robert Mitchell) makes the age old decision to focus more on the monster than on the cast of characters we’re following, sometimes framing shots specifically to allow for us to see it in the background rather than paying attention to what the characters have to say. The simplistic idea of something that never stops following no matter how far you run is something we have seen repeatedly in the genre, but the creature’s ability to take on any form adds a unique element that affects the audience as much as the characters. It’s hard not to constantly scan the backgrounds for anything slowly walking in their direction, and Mitchell plays with this through false alarms and the occasional time when you’re clearly meant to have seen it before the characters do.

Unfortunately, the concept and design of the monster is let down overall by terrible dialogue, mediocre at best acting and a healthy dose of horror cliches that have become more than laughable. The characters often decide to run upstairs and lock themselves in a small room, for example. Or, whilst running away at night, they choose the dense forest with a million possible directions the creature could come from rather than a sensible vantage point with minimal potential points of entry. It feels like the actors do what they can with the script they’ve been given but it doesn’t come across well – what was obviously intended to be throwback style dialogue just comes across as really clunky, and the full synth ‘retro’ score felt more distracting than ambient.

John May (played by the ever-excellent Eddie Marsan) is the man at the centre of this gentle meditation on life (and death) from Italian director Uberto Pasolini. John’s existence revolves around his job, which is to arrange funerals for people without friends or family. He painstakingly picks out details from a person’s life – a red necklace, (many) photos of their beloved cat – to create a funeral that gives them a proper send-off. John is let go however, which leads to a sweet if rather meandering journey as John throws everything into his last case and goes out of his way to find one man’s friends and family.

Eddie Marsan’s performance is low-key and sympathetic, much like the film itself. Quiet and unassuming, nonetheless, you can always see the cogs turning: this performance is by far the highlight of the film. It’s especially impressive when considering that, to be brutally honest, he doesn’t have much to work with. John is a nice man, but that’s all he really is. There’s very little complexity to the character, which proves a problem as all the other characters are largely pushed aside to focus on our protagonist. As a result, the other characters are rather one-note and forgettable.

That’s not to say that Still Life isn’t without its charm. It has moments of tenderness and emotion, and successfully relays the pervading loneliness and relative emptiness of John’s existence. But unfortunately, the film often oversteps the line from sweet to cloyingly sentimental, and delivers characters and plot that are bland and underdeveloped.

Note - This article was featured on the VUE cinema website as part of their ’Fans Reaction’ Article for the film. The full The Wedding Ringer: Fans Reaction article is available at http://www.myvue.com/film-news/article/title/the-wedding-ringer-fans-reaction.

Starring Josh Gad, Kevin Hart and Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, The Wedding Ringer follows Doug (Gad) in the last days of planning his wedding to Gretchen (Cuoco-Sweeting). When he comes to terms with not having enough actual friends to put on the wedding, he hires professional best man Jimmy (Hart) to help put together a team of groomsmen for the occasion. This race against time to build a fake friendship and history between Doug and Jimmy’s disparate team is a great concept and an appealing plot.

Unfortunately, the concept for The Wedding Ringer is much more interesting than the movie itself. The plot isn’t anything special – it hits a lot of the similar beats to your average buddy comedy movie – but that isn’t necessarily something to hold against the film. This recognisability means it doesn’t require much effort to follow, and puts more focus on the comedic set piece moments, most of which land successfully. It should however be called out on the borderline racist stereotypic secondary characters (that reach uncomfortable levels at times) and the fact that it doesn’t really seem to know what tone it’s going for. The film bounces around between the crudest jokes and the occasional really touching piece of character development but never really seems to strike a balance between the two, leaving us with a bit of a mess.

This tonal imbalance is somewhat made up for by some excellent comic timing from both Gad and Hart. The way Jimmy is introduced through a best man montage in which Hart plays multiple very different best men is hilariously well performed and shot, resulting in almost the entire screening I was in laughing for the whole scene. As well as this, their dance-off (which was unfortunately spoiled in the trailers) was an obvious example of the two having great chemistry and comedic timing. Gad strikes a good balance between pathetic and likeable when performing the part of Doug, and it’s a shame the script made little use of his character besides being a plot point.

It’s the underdeveloped characters which are probably the film’s biggest weakness. There isn’t a single fully fleshed out female character in the entire film, even with Cuoco-Sweeting sharing top billing with Hart and Gad and great actresses like Mimi Rogers involved. Most of the male characters aren’t much more than two dimensional either, the only exception being Hart’s Jimmy who has a somewhat complex arc that still could have been better.

The main problem this film has is it’s incredibly hard to follow the story – most of the time you have no idea why Phoenix’s character is going from one place to another, Owen Wilson keeps popping up in some form of a role, and the rest of the cast appear in and out of different scenes to either shout or get high, sometimes both. From the trailers you think this is going to be a quirky crime/comedy set in the 70s. What it actually turns out to be is a very confusing, hard to follow film, set in the 70s.

Acting wise I can’t really say anyone did a bad job. It came across extremely weird however – if that’s the way the film was meant to be received then they performed perfectly. The only major problem I had sometimes was that it was hard to hear what people were saying and the narration that goes on throughout the movie just didn’t work for me. Other than that everything else seemed ok, but nothing more.

As the film was ending I thought it was just me that must have not understood something that was going on, or I missed some overall message, but when I asked the other people I saw the film with no one had a clue what was happening, they were just as confused as I was. From what I’ve written so far it sounds like I hated the film. I didn’t hate it, I wasn’t sitting there trying to claw my eyes out and rip my ears off just so I could stop watching it, I merely sat there confused for a couple of hours watching the story unfold without any sense of payoff.

A Most Violent Year is the third feature film directed by J.C. Chandor, following on from his critically acclaimed 2013 film All is Lost starring Robert Redford. Set in 1981’s crime filled New York, the film sees Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) and his family seeking to protect and build upon their business ventures during one of the most violent years in the city’s history. From the very first truck hijacking we understand the circumstance Abel is in, trying to be a good honest man when the world around him is anything but. As the exasperated Abel says, “I spent my whole life trying not to become a gangster’.

Featuring a stellar cast including Jessica Chastain (Interstellar, The Help), Albert Brookes (Mother, Drive) and David Oyelowo (Selma), it is both Chastain and Isaac who truly shine, split between being loving parents, and “gangsters” with a burning aspiration to achieve the American Dream. They are a superb on-screen couple, with the expected quarrels, chemistry and believability you’d expect from an actual relationship (with even more realism added by a beautiful home, three daughters and a dog). Isaac delivers as an honest enterprising man facing a mountain of challenges, both physical and moral, whilst Chastain smoulders as both the stylish and supportive soul mate whilst being the daughter of a washed-up Brooklyn gangster. “It wasn’t your good luck helping you out all these years. It was me!” Keep an eye out for both of these names during the upcoming awards season!

The direction of J.C. Chandor skilfully navigates a complex plot, showcasing low-boil tension and slow-burning character drama. But the one major flaw I had was with the pacing. Very often the film left us with slow lingering conversations and exaggerated stares, and while this gave more time for character development and emotional study, some may be put off by the lack of a violent, thrilling mob escapade, as the title suggests. Also, many audience members will almost certainly find the film too dark and moody to really connect with.

 My issues with the pace and tone can be forgiven however when the different compelling threads of storyline connect towards the end. No one can doubt the skill of Chandor when it comes to the feel of an ominous foreboding atmosphere or concrete jungle environment, and he combines sepia backdrops with murky skylines to replicate the 80’s feel, creating an ideal situation for tension and destruction to brew.

Based on Stephen Sondheim’s 1987 musical, Into the Woods is sure to have you singing along with the fairy tale characters we have all come to know and love. This Disney musical is brought to you by director Rob Marshall, previously known for Chicago and Nine. However this time he’s leaving the world of half-naked dancers and instead connecting the classic tales of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood. The characters from each tale intertwine with the baker and his wife in the woods, all sharing the same goal of finding their ‘happily ever after’.

It hosts a range of stars including Johnny Depp as the wolf (unfortunately his outfit is atrocious), James Cordon as the baker and Emily Blunt as the bakers wife. However, it is Meryl Streep who dazzles above all, not only by her outstanding voice (which audiences may already be aware of from her role in Mamma Mia) but also by her transformation. She begins as the deranged and ugly witch only to become her beautiful younger self, with the most outrageous blue curls – what girl is not envious of a 65 year old woman who can pull that off? She sits at the heart of the film that sets events in motion by offering to lift the curse from the baker and his wife who are unable to conceive a child. In return, they must go into the woods to find 4 items, all of which belong to our main fairy tale characters that by coincidence are on their own journeys in the woods.

As fascinating as it is to watch, there are a few moments where you have to wonder what is going on? For example, the wolf comes across as more than just a predator but more of a child molester, talking to her seductively and sexualising the way he talks about her as ‘his meal’.

Prince Charming is also a character that will stay with you for a while: ‘I was brought up to be charming, not sincere’. Although Chris Pine is well known for his role as Captain Kirk in Star Trek, he plays the role of a smug and wealthy prince just as easily. The scene in which he and his brother sing about their beloveds is worthy of mentioning because as humorous as it was, it was possibly one of the most cringe worthy scenes throughout. Pine is obviously singing dramatically for effect, and as much as I did have to look away, I have to admit it was thoroughly enjoyable too. Watch it almost as a guilty pleasure!

For fans of the fairy tales, the end of the film plays out more like a soap drama than the conventional happy ending. It takes an unexpected and absurd turn that quite frankly lets it down in comparison to the rest of the film. I’m certain that it will make little girls everywhere retire their princess dresses!

The pacing of the film was also a little slow but on that note Marshall should still be congratulated on remarkably converting this from the stage to the big screen.

Overall, a film full of surprises, humour and light hearted singing. A little dark at times and as already warned be prepared for a drastic turn that will leave you bewildered; it is certainly a twisted version of a ‘happily ever after’.