imogen poots

The Chronology of Water

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Close up of Lidia's lip bleeding

So Kristen Stewart made a movie and, in spite of what the goons hoped, didn’t fall flat on her face. The Chronology of Water will infuriate people who harbour a grudge. Though, on the other hand, surely the twittersphere (Xsphere?) can’t still be hating on Stewart? After all this time? For the RPatz stuff? Or the sulky features and mumbling performances. Or suddenly becoming the highest paid actress in the world – briefly, till she walked away from all that. Who knows? There’s an irrational hellbeast out there for all of us if we look hard enough. Personally, I’m a fan, of Stewart’s “fuck you” attitude but particularly of the sort of films … Read more

All of You

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Laura and Simon

Technophobe romance, kind of, All of You is a little bit Eternal Sunshine, a little bit One Day. Set in an adjacent future (the present day with a tech curlicue), it imagines a world where romance is curated by tech companies promising there is someone out there for everyone and that they are just the company to do the hooking up with Miss or Mr Right. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, it turns out. Because human emotions are not lines of code. They not only don’t play to a script, they’ll go out of their way to actively undermine it. Laura and Simon are old university buddies. He’s in love … Read more

The Father

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Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins

There’s a very watchable YouTube video in which, playing the publicity game, Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster discuss his most recent film, The Father, hers, The Mauritanian, and in between share a few memories of The Silence of the Lambs, among other things. During the half hour Zoom call Foster asks Hopkins, in so many words, about his “process”, how he approached his character in The Father, what preparation he did. “None… really,” says Hopkins, blowing what’s left of Method acting out of the water with a couple of words. They’re even more impressive once you’ve seen the film, which is not an easy watch, be warned, unless you’re the sort who cheers … Read more

Filth

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James McAvoy as the deranged cop Bruce Robertson in Filth

The last film I saw that had any Irvine Welsh involvement was The Magnificent 11, a comedy so peculiarly inept that I started to think it was deliberate, a tax write-off perhaps, or a spoof of depressing British comedies of the early 1970s, in which girls with blue eye-liner would shed an ill-fitting bra to reveal dog-eared breasts. Jon S Baird’s adaptation of Welsh’s 1998 novel is far more what we expect from the writer of Trainspotting. Welsh has been out of fashion just long enough to be due a comeback, but is this what our New Puritan age is clamouring for – the sweary, druggy, skanky story of a very naughty Edinburgh copper? … Read more