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W ithin the pristine white walls of the Serpentine Gallery set in the manicured serenity of Hyde Park, there is another London – one that was left to burn. In a 24 minute film that screens throughout the day, we see footage captured by Steve McQueen as he surveys the charred remains of North Kensington’s Grenfell Tower six months after a fire that raged for 60 hours ended up taking 72 lives. This is an act of remembrance for the dead that also serves as a J’accuse aimed at politicians who, despite urgent warnings that the cladding used to line the tower was unsafe, did nothing to intervene before the avoidable tragedy of 14 June, 2017. McQueen has forged a reputation as an artist, and then as a filmmaker, for uncompromising visions that compel audiences to push through what is comfortable to see brutality and injustice. His work has a corollary that can sometimes flow through powerfully confrontational works of art, which is to say: there is a strange hope that comes from looking ...

I t’s six years since the Guardians of the Galaxy had their last formal outing (there was a 40-minute holiday special that aired on Disney+ in November 2022, but to paraphrase a popular meme , I ain’t watching all that) and quite a lot has changed since then. The gang teamed up with the Avengers to save the world. James Gunn was fired by Disney , hired by DC, rehired by Disney, and eventually announced as co-CEO of rival DC Studios, tasked with shaking up their floundering film division. Before getting around to directing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Gunn revamped The Suicide Squad, helmed a spin-off John Cena television series, and definitely Did Not Fire Superman. He’s been busy, in short, and given how underwhelming Marvel’s most recent efforts have proven to be, even the studio seem to have their doubts. But the Guardians have always been a group of cosmic underdogs, a found family forged from misfits and miscreants, led by Peter ‘Star Lord’ Quill (Chris Pratt, hop...

[dropca]W[/dropcap]hen Stu (Ed Helms) wakes up in a Bangkok bathroom in The Hangover Part II , he has a sore head not just because of his stinking hangover but also because of the tribal mark scraped into his face the night before. The 2011 comedy’s perspective on tattooing is typical of cinema and underscores a recurrent societal concern about the practice: permanence. Echoed in such scenes are all the questions tattooed people are asked by their unspoiled peers: you know that’s there forever, right? Isn’t that irresponsible? What’s it going to look like when you’re older? (Yes, no, and sick, thanks.) In horror, though, tattoo scenes make their mark not just with conservative scare tactics but through familial trauma and gendered violence. In Yasuzo Masumura’s 1966 Japanese gothic Irezumi (Japanese for “Tattoo”), Otsuya is sold to a geisha house and told by its owner to “feed on men” to make him rich. Captured in stunning close-ups, her milk-white skin is then branded by master ar...

T here are so many different modes of survival depending on all matter of circumstances including class, race, sexual orientation and gender. In Lola Quivoron’s daring debut feature, co-written with her life partner and actress Antonia Buresi, the main character relies on working outside a system full of structural barriers to persist. It plays out as a visceral crime action thriller, a detailed portrait of a subculture and a probing character study of a young French-Guadeloupian woman who enters the male-dominated world of cross-bitume (moto cross biking) in France. The cast is mainly made up of non-professional actors, some of whom Quivoron found through the biking community while making her 2016 short film Au Loin, Baltimore. First-time actress Julie Ledru, who plays the lead role of Julia, was discovered on Instagram and her screen presence dazzles like a meteor hurtling through the sky. The film rarely lets up thanks to a combination of Ledru’s dynamic turn, kinetic camerawork ...

I f you take a peek at Priya Kansara’s acting CV, you’ll currently only see a couple of credits: three short films; small roles in two Netflix series; and now, the lead role in Nida Manzoor’s Polite Society . An actress very much at the beginning of what promises to be a storied career, Kansara studied science at university and was working in healthcare communications prior to making the giant leap towards performance. She studied acting at the Identity School, which was founded by Femi Oguns in 2003 and counts John Boyega and Letitia Wright among its alumni. After auditioning for a different part in Manzoor’s debut feature, Kansara impressed the team so much she was asked to read for the lead. She announces herself in dramatic and comic style with Polite Society and brings an infectious, sunny energy and wilfulness to the character of Ria, who must contend with disapproving parents and her sister’s shifty new fiancé, all while trying to pursue her goal of becoming a world-famous ...

W ithout unduly denigrating the achievements of Richard Wayne Penniman, – or, the artist formerly known as Little Richard – there was a perception that he was a one-of-a-kind musical firecracker who dined out on a small clutch of classic tunes for nearly 70 years. Unlike many of his jaded peers, Richard was someone who would blast out ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ in 2006 with the same intensity and passion as he did in 1956. What you might read from this is that he was supremely proud and protective of his cultural legacy, and Lisa Cortes’ new profile documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything, says, correct – and he has every right to be. Things begin with a customary love-in as a gaggle of rock ‘n’ roll dinos take turns to laud Richard and his formative innovations in the field of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Yet the film seems to want to get that hagiographic stuff off the table quickly in order to mount a more in-depth and analytical take on the Little Richard story – one which aligns more neat...

“I ’m not a girl, I’m a woman,” are the stabbing words spoken by Dalva (Zelda Samson), a 12-year-old who wears heavy makeup, scrapes her hair into a bun and dresses in middle-aged women’s clothes. The film opens with officers taking Dalva’s father Jacques (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h) away. The camera resists lingering on Jacques, clutching onto Dalva’s gaze and capturing every flinch and tear of pain. Enraged and confused as to why she’s been ripped away from her father and placed into a temporary care home, Dalva initially refuses to comply with her new social worker Jayden (Alexis Maneti). She demands to be reunited with her father, who she only refers to by his first name, and the film unpacks the complexity of controlling relationships through Dalva’s eventual interactions with Jayden. It’s a fragile subject matter to explore. But when one in 20 children have been abused in the UK, it’s also a harrowing reality. Nicot previously volunteered at an emergency youth centre, where she lea...

N ida Manzoor, taking bites of a sugar-dusted cookie in a swanky Soho hotel, politely fudges the F-word. The only time she goes the full F-U-C-K is when scolding herself for being a South Asian good-girl. She’s living the social tension around pleasing others that’s escalated to bizarre proportions in her debut feature comedy, Polite Society. “Biscuits are nice!” is how Ria (Priya Kansara), the heroine, dismisses Saleem, the “nice”, “hotter than God” geneticist-doctor with dastardly nuptial plans on Lena (Ritu Arya), her sister. Niceness, in Polite Society, is evil. Fortunately, life doesn’t always imitate art, because Manzoor, clean-faced but for winged black eyeliner, is adorable. The sisterly naughtiness of her smash-hit series We Are Lady Parts is in evidence, as we bond over trashy films and a desire to see menstrual blood on screen – Manzoor punctuating her enthusiasm with kittenish growls (“Ugh, the period scene in Souvenir II, is it everything?”) and dainty thwacks of the ta...

J ames Bond has fought megalomaniacs across the world, but rarely has he battled his most dangerous enemy – himself. Forty years ago, the thirteenth Bond adventure (and sixth starring Roger Moore), Octopussy, faced competition from a rival 007 picture: the “unofficial” Never Say Never Again. A remake of 1965’s Thunderball, this pretender to the Bond throne had an ace up its sleeve – a surprise comeback from Sean Connery, in his first appearance as Bond since quitting the series in 1971. But how could this happen? The brainchild of executive producer Kevin McClory, Never Say Never Again had its origins in the early 1960s – before producers Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman formed Eon Productions and kickstarted the Bond movie franchise as we know it today. The complex and lengthy legal entanglement which surrounded McClory’s rival project is explored in Robert Sellers’ excellent book, The Battle for Bond. As the author summarises, it was “40 years of lawsuits, court cases, injunct...

‘P olite society’ is a turn of phrase that came to prominence in the late 1700s, epitomising haughty upper-class judgement that deemed certain behaviour to be unbecoming. As the title of Nida Manzoor’s completely delightful debut feature, the writer/director co-opts this atmosphere of Regency-era snobbery to represent modern Pakistani society as governed by an unofficial council of disapproving “aunties” – an adversary that assumes many guises for her action heroine to bring down. “When I’m older, I’m going to be a stuntwoman.” Karate-chopping her way onto a big screen near you is the irrepressible protagonist of Polite Society, who likes to remind anyone who will listen about her destiny, regardless of their interest or, in the case of her teachers and parents, lack of enthusiasm. Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) bulldozes through life with her ambitions front-and-centre, and her only hypewoman on the home front is her big sister Lena (Ritu Arya) who is, when we meet her, slumped in the do...

I n an interview with Stephen Colbert to promote Renfield , Nicolas Cage listed his top five Nic Cage films : Pig , Mandy , Bringing Out the Dead , Bad Lieutenant , and Joe . No Face/Off, or Con Air, or Raising Arizona, or any of the traditional examples of the zany, wacko performances has been entrenched in meme history – and definitely not Renfield. The roles he picks up showcase best the genuine and robust emotional sincerity he laces through all his roles, with even his viral, mocked highlights being capable of legitimate gravitas. After his Oscar nomination for his dual turn in Adaptation, the 2000s saw a slip in quality control for Cage, and by the 2010s the frequency of his direct-to-video output had consumed his career . There were the odd blips of stripped-back and artistic projects, but modern Cage was known more for his troubles with the IRS and ‘Cage Rage’ on-screen freakouts than the strengths of his talent. But then came Mandy, and its LSD-fuelled mission of raw venge...

1 953 was a landmark year for science fiction cinema. Universal stunned audiences with 3D thrills in It Came from Outer Space, Warner Bros. released the hugely influential Ray Harryhausen classic The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and Paramount’s War of the Worlds adapted H.G. Wells’ classic tale with spectacular special effects. But one film in particular captures the decade in a strikingly urgent and frightening manner: William Cameron Menzies’ Invaders from Mars. 70 years on, the film remains a haunting nightmare of social reflection and childhood anxiety. Told from a child’s perspective, the film sees a community rot from within. One night during a storm, young David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) wakes to see a flying saucer dipping into the sandpit behind the crooked fence that lines his backyard. His father George (Leif Erickson) heads out to check in the morning, trusting his son’s testimony with warm affection, but when he returns, George is someone else. He’s cold, authoritative, and vi...

I n 1975, when Junya Sato’s The Bullet Train (Shinkansen daibakuha) was released, Japan’s Shinkansen , or ‘new main line’ – the world’s first high-speed train system – was only 11 years old, even if, in the decade since its opening in 1964, it had been extended across the country. These Bullet Trains were a symbol of Japan’s rapid progress – the barrelling momentum with which the nation was advancing, both technologically and economically. Yet there were losers as well as winners in the post-war recovery. As Tetsuo Okita (Ken Takakura) sees his small business bankrupted by an increasingly centralised rail industry, leading to his financial ruin and divorce, he joins forces with downtrodden Hiroshi Oshiro (Akira Oda), who has recently been mistreated by another company after a workplace accident, and with one-time radical student revolutionary Masaru Koga (Kei Yamamoto), to execute the perfect crime, which will allow them to extort five million dollars and leave behind forever the co...

M ade over the course of 7 years, adapting Takehide Hori’s short film of the same name, Junk Head is a grimy, Švankmajer-esque spelunking into an absurd world where fussy middle managers and bored shift workers coexist with monstrous fleshy spider-creatures and other demonic entities. Seeing the grotesque, imaginative creature design and the scale of it you might not guess that, before the short film that was expanded into the feature, director Hori had never worked in animation before, or filmmaking. Not only that, he handled nearly every aspect of production himself: building the sets, designing and building the puppets, composing the score, voicing the guttural otherworldly grunts of its funny little characters as well as animating them. After playing festivals internationally including Fantasia, Junk Head earned praise from Guillermo del Toro, calling it a “one-man band work of deranged brilliance”. We spoke to Mori about his DIY approach, working on a budget and how theme park ...