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  If the last few years has taught us anything it’s that uninformed conspiracy theories on the internet are a genuine danger to life. And when you think about conspiracy theorists through history, before the popularity of the web and social media, these people are nuts, right? They obsessively go over things that most of us have put right out of our minds. Nobody wants to be a nutter on the internet or anywhere… right? Well since Oliver Stone’s peerless film about the Kennedy Assassination and the only man to attempt to prosecute it, attitudes to the killing have changed. More documents were de-classified as a consequence of interest in the case. But historians rose to challenge its central thesis: that Kennedy was assassinated because he wanted to end the Vietnam war. He spoke of universal peace and this flew in the face of those who wanted to perpetuate warfare. This is the Military-Industrial Complex that we are warned of in the movie right at the beginning, through a real spee...

  What’s interesting about this film is… well, there’s a lot, but it’s a racially fascinating film that would make Quentin Tarantino gape. Yes it’s a classic revenge story and it begins with a brutal murder of Nat Love’s parents in front of him, the bad Rufus ( Idris Elba )—who isn’t fully revealed until much later, when his own gang rescue him as he’s transported across the country in a cell on a train.  The train hijack is stylish. So stylish. From the sight of a horse on the line to the brakes of the train and execution of the driver, the tension rises and falls. There’s also a saloon bar in a beautifully realised western town: the kind of place where well-to-do folk will stand around watching a fight. The violence is uncompromising but not explicit as it is in Django Unchained which has been mentioned in the same sentence—although that film never had “A White Town”. This movie has a script that’s wears its wit as matter-of-factly as the stylishly dressed adversaries. And t...

The musical Tick tick… boom was written by Jonathan Larson right before Rent, and Rent is the phenomenon of a musical that Larson didn’t live to see flourish. And so, a story of a songwriter who seemingly couldn’t stop himself writing songs—and really very good ones too, with a variety of influences including Billy Joel—is a great companion piece to Rent as well as being a celebration of a beloved talent who died tragically young. And it’s extra poignant that the musical is brought to the screen in a directorial debut from Lin-Manuel Miranda. Miranda is a beloved figure in musical theatre and animated movie musicals, and you can draw lines from Hamilton back to Rent. Both shows brought in fans at the ground level with lotteries: you didn’t have to have hundreds of dollars, you just queued up daily to enter the lottery, and it was this that grew the Rent community in New York. It didn’t quite take off in London, and I wouldn’t say that Rent is for me, but I admire it and many of the ...

  This is a post-apocalyptic drama which was made for the cinema but ended up on Apple TV+. And there’s a theme within it about avoiding people, which is a reason why I still haven’t returned to the cinema. It is a pretty standard story of a man who is surviving following the decline of the climate and breakdown of civilisation. And the someone, the titular Finch, is Tom Hanks—who has survived on an island with a basketball before. And he creates a robot carer, specifically because he feels as though he isn’t going to live long and he needs something to look after his dog. In the interest of not being triggering, the dog is fine. Because when you break it down this story it is about a man who has lost everything except the dog and he is clinging on to him (the dog’s name is Goodyear and he is played by a terrier called Seamus). The film begins with Finch working to accumulate as much information as he can prior to making a road trip to San Francisco in an 80s RV. We see him dealing...