Review: The Great Gatsby
He watches the winking green light. He is blissfully unaware that it is a bilious green, the green of envy, an old money Cyclops that never sleeps. This light will never be extinguished, never be...
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: Spring Breakers
Hieronymus Bosch is alive and well and living in Florida, bitches! He’s melding slobbering hunks of flesh into micro bikinis Brian Yuzna style. Two finger smiles, porn star tongues-this could be an...
Cruel Britannia: A closer look at Gangster No.1.
London 1999. In the shadow of the Millennium Dome, men with faces as rough as Bethnal Green tube station laugh and leer at the camera. These monsters in bow ties are grotesque; their mirth rains like...
Review: Zero Dark Thirty
We know the images--the screams, that desperate radio chatter on September 11th 2001, those blazing towers might well have been upended battleships from Pearl Harbour. It was a call to war that...
Review: Django Unchained
America 1858. “Gentleman, you had my curiosity. But now you have my attention.” Leonardo DiCaprio’s Calvin Candie, Francophile, plantation owner and slave trader addresses Django and Dr King...
Review: The Master
“Is God dead?” For some atheists he never lived, but our film idols did. And when the director you worship dies how do you begin to replace him? Like religion there’s a good deal of choice on...
2012 LFF Dispatch 1: The House with a Turret, The Horses of God, Wolf Children
In the third year of the Great Patriotic War a nameless boy and his sick mother make their way back to their home in Ukraine. The train they travel on rumbles like artillery fire, a fellow passenger...
Review: Dredd
Mega City One is widescreen for 800 million people. Its streets are legion. 12 serious crimes every minute. 17,000 crimes a day. The law can only respond to 6% of them. Rotting unnoticed in a back...
Review: The Wedding Video
Inside the charm and gentle wit of “The Wedding Video” is an Ira Levin satire trying to claw its way out. Set in the WAG safe-haven of Cheshire, Nigel Cole’s movie has all the right credentials...
Review: Arirang and Town of Runners
Faster, higher stronger! The Olympics continue to deliver the most extraordinary tales of endeavour, victory and defeat against the backdrop of a resurgent London. Athletes and pundits litter their...