Review: Inherent Vice
Private detective, professional hippie and arch dope-fiend, Larry “Doc” Sportello looks like The Wolfman on a bad day or like he’s been swilling around on your dinner plate amongst the gravy...
Author: Mark Farnsworth
Senior Film Writer Mark Farnsworth teaches Film in East London and is currently working on two screenplays, The Mysteries and Fair Access. He also writes the Oh/Cult section for Brokenshark.co.uk.
Review: American Sniper
What makes a sniper American exactly? Being on the right side of a fight? Stencilling “The Punisher” logo on your equipment like a real life Frank Castle? Wearing a baseball cap backwards whilst...
Review: Foxcatcher
Marcus Aurelius, the last of the Five Good Emperors, commented that “the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.” What is more tragic than the forlorn shadow of a fallen athlete...
Review: Birdman
What is it with back-stories? Every self-respecting superhero seems to need one and preferably the darker the better. The origin of this and the origin of that, why can’t they just be? Who said we...
Review – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Thorin Oakenshield stalks the great halls of Erebor like a Shakespearian king, tragedy draped around his shoulders. This doom-laden cloak threatens to drag the King Under The Mountain into a quagmire...
Review: Breaking the Waves
When you gaze at all the wonders that “Breaking the Waves” possesses you have to submit to Emily Watson’s eyes. Are they the most exhilarating orbs owned by a British actor since Michael...
Review: Gomorrah The Series
After reading this review and when you sit back to watch the box set of “Gomorrah The Series,” take some time out to remember just how much some writers have to suffer for their art. Back in 2006...
LFF Dispatch 4: Brad Pitt’s “Fury”
Irony rides a pale horse. Where have all the Panzers gone? The architects of blitzkrieg have been reduced to legs and tails and hooves as Patton and Zhukov strangle the Thousand Year Reich. Oblivious...
LFF 2014 Dispatch No 3: Thou Wast Mild and Lovely and History of Fear
The remarkable and sinister “Thou Wast Mild and Lovely” begins in abrupt fashion. Jeremiah a Kentucky farmer wrestles with his daughter Sarah. She stabs him with a headless chicken, an act both...
LFF 2014 Dispatch No 2: Fishing Without Nets, Flow and Jamie Marks is Dead.
Expanded from Cutter Hodierne’s own short film of the same name, “Fishing Without Nets” is the flipside of “Captain Phillips.” Hodierne explores Somali pirates from the point of view of...