DVD & Digital

Film review: Love Without Walls

 Cinema can often reflect our cultural and societal issues back at us from the big screen and in the latest drama from writer and director Jane Gull, we see the plight of a young married couple in post-lockdown Britain. Love Without Walls is a social-realist romance that follows singer-songwriter Paul (Niall McNamee) and his wife Sophie (Shana Swash) as they struggle to make ends meet in London. Down on their luck in the early stages of our current cost of living crisis, they leave their unpaid bills and final reminders behind to pursue an opportunity in Southend-on-Sea which might turn their ill fortunes around, but their dire situation goes from bad to worse.

Continue reading “Film review: Love Without Walls”
DVD & Digital

DVD review: Hypnotic

Taking on many aspects of the filmmaking process, from editing, cinematography, and production design, writer and director Robert Rodriguez was once referred to as a “one-man-film-crew”. His latest piece is a departure from the grindhouse style he is associated with but it’s still very much his movie, his co-writer Max Borenstein adapting from a story Rodriguez was developing over twenty years ago. Hypnotic is a sci-fi action thriller set in Austin, Texas where detective Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck) is reeling after his young daughter is kidnapped from a local park. As he investigates a bank heist carried out by a man known as Dellrayne (William Fichtner), he discovers a shocking link between the master criminal and his missing child.

Continue reading “DVD review: Hypnotic”
DVD & Digital

DVD review: Master Gardener

Auteurs are defined as filmmakers whose ‘individual style and complete control over all elements of production give a film its personal and unique stamp’. Paul Schrader’s films have always dealt in redemption and masculinity but in recent years, he has almost developed his recurring themes into a genre of their own. The final instalment of his thematically linked contemporary trilogy, following on from 2017’s First Reformed and 2021’s The Card Counter, is psychological indie thriller Master Gardener. The story centres around Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton), a horticulturist who works for wealthy widow Mrs Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver) by tending to her picture-esque Louisiana estate. When her troubled great-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell) comes to stay and becomes Narvel’s apprentice, he is forced to reckon with his own dark, dangerous past.

Continue reading “DVD review: Master Gardener”