Flightplan first published by EyeforFilm, 25 Nov 2005 Long-haul flights are an uncomfortable business. You sit for hours in a small seat, having to put up with poor in-flight entertainment, the unpredictable and often annoying behaviour of the complete strangers around you, and a constant low-level anxiety that comes from being trapped midair in a…
Jarhead first published by EyeforFilm, 13 Jan 2006 “Every war is different. Every war is the same.” These words, coming near the end of Sam Mendes’ Jarhead, summarise the film’s direct engagement with the anxiety of influence. In trying to pin down the highly personal experiences of a Marine Corps sniper during the first Gulf…
Coup! has its UK première at the Glasgow Film Festival 2024 The events of Joseph Schuman and Austin Stark’s Coup! take place in the America of the past, towards the Great War‘s end in 1918, but it could equally, mutatis mutandis, be set today. The obvious point of comparison is the Spanish flu which is…
Dopesick – Season 1 first published by Sight and Sound, Winter 2021-22 issue Synopsis: 1986-2005, America. Purdue Pharma introduces the opioid Oxycontin to the market, falsely claiming it is non-addictive, and using seductive persuasion and threats to push doctors, and clinics to prescribe it in ever larger doses to patients in pain. A DEA agent…
Night Moves first published by EyeForFilm After watching an amateur film on the damage humanity is wreaking on the environment, Dena (Dakota Fanning) asks the filmmaker Jackie (Clara Mamet), “I’m curious what you think it is exactly that we’re supposed to do. Do you have some sort of big plan?” “I’m not focused on big plans,”…