FILMS Daphne UK 2017 90 mins Dir: Peter Mackie Burns
Blade Runner 2049 From Friday 6th October USA 2017 Dir: Denis Villeneuve
Harrison Ford has been revisiting roles from his past with Han Solo in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the just announced Indiana Jones film but it is his role of Rick Deckard, Blade Runner that is possibly the most intriguing. Ryan Gosling is a new blade runner for the Los Angeles Police Department who unearths a long-buried secret that has a catastrophic consequence. This discovery leads him on a quest to find the missing Rick Deckard. Sicario and The Arrival director Denis Villeneuve directs this return to the neo-noir world of Blade Runners and Replicants.
Daphne has ‘sort of given up on people’ as she goes through the motions of her busy life, working as a cook in a London restaurant and through a series of drug fuelled hook ups. She resists genuine intimacy in her few friendships and rejects her mother Rita’s attempts to engage. When she witnesses a violent robbery, she’s thrown into chaos and finally begins to confront the person she’s become. Cut from the same ironic, confessional cloth as Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s BBC series Fleabag, Daphne offers us a female protagonist who can be as fiercely unlikeable as she is compelling to watch.
Detroit From Friday 25th August USA 2017 143 mins Dir: Kathryn Bigelow
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind USA 1977 137 mins Dir: Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg followed the massive worldwide success of Jaws by jumping with both feet into the world of science fiction. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind follows the parallel stories of a group of scientists investigating a series of strange occurances while electric lineman Roy (Richard Dreyfuss) struggles to come to terms with what he has seen after witnessing a UFO. This classic of big ideas science fiction filmmaking stars Teri Garr, Bob Balaban and legendary French filmmaker Francois Truffaut.
Star Wars star John Boyega leads in this new film from the makers of Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker. A powerful dramatization of the 1967 12th Street Riot, Detroit tackles the monumental issue of race in America crafting a searing historical nightmare of a film. The film begins with a raid on an unlicenced bar with the overzealous police treating the black patrons like criminals, lining them up outside. An incensed crowd gathers as the outrage overflows. Depicting an event from 50 years ago, this film shouldn’t have this much modern day relevance.