UKC

Nightmare Alley. This is an engrossing film noir, with classic genre images and themes given spectacular hallucinatory twists in director Guillermo del Toro's trademark visual style. It's beautifully filmed throughout. Bradley Cooper gives a fine performance as drifter with a dark secret Stan, who graduates from a carnie mind-reading act depriving the gullible of their dollars, to a highly successful mentalist doing the same to city high society in swanky hotels. He meets up with a fellow mind-reader (aka psychoanalyst) Lillith Ritter, played as a classic peroxide femme fatale by Cate Blanchett. Sample romantic dialogue: You're no good/How do you know?/I'm no good either.  And so the descent into violence and madness begins and keeps on going till the final inevitable frames. 8/10.

I like lighter stuff. Music dance and comedy being faves. 
The new West side Story/Spielberg is brilliant. The cinematography is amazing and the dancers and voices superb. Some people have so much talent.

The Duke is next on my list. Helen Mirren being a favourite actress. 
it’s biblical rain outside- the cinema beckons….. 

Not quite a film, but I just watched Black Mirror - Smithereens.

As you may know, BM is very hit and miss. At its best, it's every bit as good as watching a feature film, and at its worst you end up feeling violated. 

This one is a corker. Brilliantly constructed, witty drama giving extremely pointed commentary on social media addiction. If you saw Nosedive, this is played a lot straighter, but it's better put together with very good acting, only the occasional cheesy line, and I found it gripping, on point, and genuinely moving. Bravo!

The other one out of BM5 I've watched, Striking Vipers, was properly shit. Silly, pointless incoherent drivel with annoying glossy US TV production values. Avoid!

Macbeth. This is a fascinating new take on the Shakespeare tragedy by Joel Coen, who has scripted and directed. It looks tremendous, in Expressionist-style black and white, most of the action taking place within a bare and brutalist castle of stark shadows, echoing corridors and vertiginous drops. The character of Lady M is a great fit for the magnificent Frances McDormand, who speaks the verse beautifully. Denzel Washington gives a similarly impressive performance as a weary Macbeth, though both are in danger of being upstaged by Kathryn Hunter's virtuoso physical portrayal of the Witches. As someone who spent many years teaching Shakespeare I particularly liked how powerfully Coen brings out the key images that run through the play, such as birds of good & ill omen, blood & water, stars & fog, light & dark. I imagine the movie will soon become the go-to for A-level literature! 9/10.

Really looking forward to seeing this. I mean the Macbeth.