Levon Hawke

Girls Like Girls

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Sonya and Coley embrace

A coming-of-ager set in 2006. Which means what? iPods and computers with big chunky displays. AOL Messenger. And Zach Braff! All are here in Girls Like Girls, Hayley Kiyoko’s feature debut, which was a song, a music video and a book before it became a film. Work that IP. Though not in it much, Braff embodies that time almost like no one else – he’d been in the wispy, troubled-dude dramedy Garden State in 2004 and was midway through his run on Scrubs. He’s really just a flavour bomb this time around, here to remind us what it was all like back then. The focus is actually on teenager Coley (Maya da Costa), … Read more

Blink Twice

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Channing Tatum with Polaroid camera

Men are scumbags and tech bro’s the scumbaggiest of them all. Blink Twice isn’t exactly making the most out-there statement for 2024, but in her directorial debut (she also co-wrote) Zoë Kravitz shows she knows her way around a horror movie, can build mood and tension and get performances out of her stars which are genre-familiar and yet fresh. Kravitz’s current partner, Channing Tatum, is particularly excellent as Slater King, a performative billionaire – think Musk rather than Bezos – who, as the film opens, is apologising with all his heart in an address to the world. He’s sorry for something. Penitent, pleading, he insists he’s learned from whatever he’s done, is now … Read more