Award Winning Independent Cinema

by Helen Tope Highly charged and confrontational, Bad Luck Banging promises you an unforgettable experience. Directed and written by Romanian film-maker Radu Jude, the film starts with an explicit scene of a couple having sex.  It transpires that the woman being filmed is Emilia, who works as a teacher in a prestigious school in Bucharest. Her husband Eugen uploads the homemade video onto an adults-only website, however, the video finds it way onto P*rnhub. Emilia (played by Katia Pascariu) is frantic as the video is then discovered by her pupils. She finds herself in ... Continue Reading

by Helen Tope Spencer is screening at Plymouth Arts Cinema from 3-9 December, with a Bringing in Baby Screening on 8 December. Focusing on three days over Christmas 1991, Spencer is a unique take on the Princess Diana story. Directed by Pablo Larrain, Spencer leans into the claustrophobia of living inside the Royal bubble. Diana, now mother to William and Harry, has stepped out from her initial role as blushing bride. She is by this point a global player, the most photographed woman on the planet. But beyond the optics is a woman living with an eating disorder, with little support ... Continue Reading

by Helen Tope A new film from Wes Anderson is always an event. With an impressive roll call, including Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel, the expectations for The French Dispatch have been understandably high. Anderson takes us to France in the Sixties and Seventies, to a fictional town called Ennui-Sur-Blasé. Here are situated the offices of The French Dispatch, a supplement magazine for an American newspaper. Despite the best efforts of its editor, Arthur Howtizer Jnr (a curiously underused Bill Murray), the magazine is due to close. The magazine is determined to bow out in style, with Howitzer ... Continue Reading

The third film from director Eliza Hittman, the film was featured in a Reclaim The Frame event on 14 May. You can watch Mia Bays' interview with Eliza Hittman on our Facebook page. Never Rarely Sometimes Always tells the story of 17-year-old Autumn. Living with her family in Pennsylvania, Autumn suspects she is pregnant. The film begins at Autumn’s school – appearing in a talent show, Autumn (played by Sidney Flanigan) sings and plays the guitar. She is the typical outsider – too different to be read clearly by her classmates. They jeer ... Continue Reading

A daring concept, beautifully presented, The Artist became the cinematic phenomenon of 2011. Working on the idea of a modern silent film, this was a project years in development for director and screenwriter, Michel Hazanavicius. The Artist was initially put on limited release, and soon became a hit with audiences and critics. Winning 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, what could be assumed to be a niche, avant-garde experiment, became a celebration of cinema; the past, its present and the films yet to come. Hazanavicius drops us right into Hollywood’s silent era. We ... Continue Reading

Our reviewer Helen Tope revisits Hitchcock's classic. Sitting in Alfred Hitchcock’s creative high-point, Rear Window is a textbook thriller. While it doesn’t have the psychosexual drama of Vertigo, Rear Window (released in 1954) treads tonally between the rooftop capers of To Catch a Thief and the nail-shredding tension of North by Northwest. In Hitchcock pitching it here, Rear Window raises the cinematic game of cat and mouse to extraordinary heights.  Hitchcock’s scene-setting begins wordlessly. We are in a Greenwich Village apartment; it is high summer New York. The camera pans to a thermometer pushing 90, moving across to ... Continue Reading