Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Fede Alvarez Stars: Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, Sylvie Hoeks, Stephen Merchant, Lakeith Stanfield, Claes Bang, Vicky Krieps, Mikael Persbrandt, Christopher Convery. The Girl In The Spider’s Web is the fourth installment in the Millennium series of dark and misogynistic Scandinavian crime thrillers created by the late Stieg Larsson, who died of a heart attack in 2004. The novels centred around Lisbeth Salander, an unlikely anti-heroine for the twentieth century – a tattooed and heavily pierced computer hacker who had survived …
FIRST MAN
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Damien Chazelle Stars: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Pablo Schreiber, Christopher Abbott, Ethan Embry, Patrick Fugit, Olivia Hamilton, Ciaran Hinds, Corey Stoll, Shea Whigham, Lukas Haas. Oscar winning filmmaker Damien Chazelle has quite a resume to his credit. He who gave us the superb drama Whiplash, which was my top film of 2014. He followed that with La La Land, a colourful and kitsch homage to the old Hollywood musicals of yesteryear, but I was not quite as enamoured with it as many other critics seemed …
UNSANE
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Steven Soderberg Stars: Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Juno Temple, Jay Pharoah, Amy Irving, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Polly McKie, Gibson Frazier, Aimee Mullins, Matt Damon. A couple of years ago Sawyer Valentini (played by Claire Foy, from tv’s The Crown, etc) moved from Boston to Pennsylvania to escape a stalker. She works as an insurance analyst and seems settled in her new city. But she soon believes that her stalker has followed her. She seeks psychological help with a counselor at a facility called Highland Centre to deal with …
BREATHE
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Andy Serkis Stars: Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Hugh Bonneville, Tom Hollander, Diana Rigg, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Amit Shah, Jonathan Hyde, David Wilmot, Stephen Mangan, Dean-Charles Chapman. The opening night film at the recent British Film Festival at Palace Cinemas, Breathe is an unashamedly old-fashioned tear jerker that will appeal to the same demographic that loved films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, etc. This is the inspiring true story of Robin Cavendish (played here by Andrew Garfield, from Hacksaw Ridge, etc), who …
THE LADY IN THE VAN
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Nicholas Hytner Stars: Maggie Smith, Alex Jennings, Roger Allam, Jim Broadbent, Dominic Cooper, James Corden, Frances de la Tour, Sam Spruell, Claire Foy, Cecilia Noble. Based on the stage play written by Alan Bennett, one of most successful contemporary playwrights in England with credits including The History Boys, The Madness Of King George, etc, this is "mostly a true story" that mixes fact and fiction in an entertaining mix. The play was inspired by Bennett's encounter with Mary Shepherd (dual Oscar winner Maggie Smith), the …
SEASON OF THE WITCH
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Dominic Sena Stars: Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Claire Foy, Christopher Lee, Robert Sheehan, Ulrich Thompson, Stephen Campbell Moore, Stephen Graham. Sneaking into cinemas without much fanfare is Season Of The Witch, a rather dull, disappointing and inherently silly sword and sorcery adventure set in 14th century Europe. This clunky $40 million production flopped at the US box office and is being thrown away by the local distributors before it disappears onto DVD. The 14th century was a time of religious zealotry, the bloody …