How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu Bloomsbury Publishing In 2031, melting ice in Siberian exposes extinct beasts and even the thirty thousand year old remains of a young girl. When one of the archaeologists at the remote dig dies of a mystery illness, it is found that the team has reanimated […]
Red Rocket | Dir: Sean Barker | ★ ★ ★ ★ Writer / director Sean Barker has made some memorable films. Starlet (2012) centered on an unusual friendship between a porn star and an elderly retiree. Tangerine (2015), which was shot on iPhones, was about a transgender sex worker in Hollywood. The Florida Project (2018), filmed in […]
Here’s to Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera Simon & Schuster The American authors’ first collaboration was the Young Adult romantic comedy What If It’s Us, published in 2019. The book focused on Arthur and Ben, two teenage boys who meet each other by chance at a post office and fall for each other. […]
Benedetta | Dir: Paul Verhoeven | ★ ★ ★ Based on the book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy by American author and historian Judith Brown, I really wanted to like this erotic thriller from the Dutch director of Basic Instinct (1992), Showgirls (1995) and Elle (2016) starring Isabelle Huppert. This […]
Tank Water by Michael Burge MidnightSun Publishing James Brandt knew what was going on in his hometown of Kippen and he knew he had to get away as early as he could. Apart from being a vegetarian in a farming region, James realised his sexuality set him apart and there were people in the town […]
If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich Hatchett The American boy band Saturday is comprised of four young guys who got together at a music camp when they were sixteen. Best friends backstage, the teenage heartthrobs are now hopping from concert arena to concert arena; European city to European city; hotel to hotel […]
The Lost Leonardo | Dir: Andreas Koefoed | ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ The story begins when Alexander Parish finds an interesting painting in New Orleans, which as everyone knows is a town in the USA. Parish is a ‘sleeper hunter’ – someone who buys works of art that could possibly be worth more than their […]
Dune Part 1 | Dir: Denis Villeneuve | ★ ★ ★ ★ The world of Dune was conceived by American science fiction writer Frank Herbert in the 1960s. Set in an impossibly distant future on the planet of Arrakis, Herbert’s world is an arid, sandy wasteland whose precious spice (a hallucinogenic opioid that extends life and enhances […]
The Simplest Gift by Stefanos Xenakis Harlequin Athens-based Stefanos Xenakis is a social media phenomenon who has a passion for self-improvement. He has come a long way from the scared little child who couldn’t stand up for himself, was scared to say ‘no’ to someone, scared to do what he wanted and even scared to […]
The Worst Person In The World | Dir: Joachim Trier | ★ ★ ★ ★ Julie (Renate Reinsve who won the Best Actress Award at Cannes Film Festival) is almost thirty and still doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life. Unlike her mother, her grandmother, her great grandmother and generations of women before her, […]
