Alex Garland

Men

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Harper in a dark passage

Impressive, the way Alex Garland shifted from being just an incredibly successful author to being an incredibly successful director as well. Men follows his previous two films, Ex Machina (what a debut) and Annihilation plus the TV show Devs, all three of which he also wrote. It’s a superbly conceived film, a folk horror movie with a great cast, fabulous atmosphere, a spooky score and some fabulous imagery. But is it actually scary? Is the sense of threat felt rather than just observed? I’m not convinced, though plenty of rave reviews seem fairly sure it is. Jessie Buckley plays an everywoman, Harper, a successful something or other with a swish apartment overlooking the … Read more

Civil War

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Jessie and Lee take cover behind a car

Civil War. The title and the upfront concept – a modern-day fight to the death between secessionist states and the rest of the USA – is more enticement and attention grabber than political provocation. Look for evidence of red v blue or the culture wars writ large, or the Trump years, and you’ll find them, but you have to look hard and writer director Alex Garland has other rockets to launch here. For all the big budget and hardware, helicopter firestorms and battle scenes, it’s a very small, old-fashioned B movie about a single person’s journey towards salvation, with Kirsten Dunst as the battle-scarred war photographer whose inner dialogue about her approach – get … Read more

Sunshine

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Cillian Murphy in Sunshine

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 15 February Galileo Galilei born, 1564 On this day in 1564, the astronomer, mathematician and physicist Galileo Galilei was born. He was most famous for advocating the Copernican view of the solar system, which put the sun at the centre and had the planets orbiting about. This was in stark contradiction of the Church view, which had the earth at the centre, and also the Tychonic system (earth at centre, sun orbiting earth, other planets orbiting the sun). Galileo was an accomplished lutenist, like his father, and also considered the priesthood before choosing the life scientific. He had studied medicine before … Read more