Splice: Parenting the monster
Clive Nicoli and Elsa Kast are rock and roll scientists, genetic engineers surfing on the flotsam and jetsam of their DNA experiments that just might hold the cure for “Parkinson’s,...
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.
“30 love”: Tennis as erotic thriller
Jacques Barzun once wrote, “Tennis belongs to the individualistic past--a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.” “30 love” reveals the tennis professional as...
“Inception” – an existential heist
Make no mistake, “Inception” is superior summer entertainment. Nolan’s existential heist movie deals with, “intense sadness, separation and loss,” all the elements, according to Professor...
“Predators”: a waste of a perfectly good Adrien Brody
We’re falling. Falling, spinning, hurtling through the air, plummeting to certain death. The Flay-like mercenary, Royce claws at his parachute, desperately trying to punch it open before he...
“The Empire Strikes Back” – 30 years on
Like an old soldier reluctant to talk share war stories, I’ve always been somewhat reticent to disclose my service to the “Star Wars” saga over the last thirty odd years. Not that I’m...
Black Death: the horror of religion
“In the year of our lord 1348” you can almost taste the plague ridden corpses. Swollen, black and teeming with rats, humanity is rotting into the ground one peasant at a time. Has God forsaken...
“Rec 2” – gore and social commentary
“Rec 2” doesn’t muck about. From the off Spanish directors Jamie Balaguero and Paco Plaza get straight down to business as they sling us into the back of a SWAT van with four heavily armed...
“One Night in Turin”: resurrected football, resurrected pasts
1990. Football was as dead as Dillinger in England. Heysel, Hillsborough, Bradford - each appalling tragedy was another stake though the heart of the national game and a pin in the voodoo doll of...
“Four Lions”: terrorism and uncomfortable laughter
What exactly is a “home grown terrorist?” Young Muslims cloned in specially controlled vats hidden in secret greenhouses under guard day and night from elite seven-foot tall Al Qaeda warriors?...
Centurion: the perils of empire make for good cinema
Early on in Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian” the Emperor Hadrian, now 60, muses, “This morning it occurred to me for the first time that my body, my faithful companion and friend,...