Red

A dour Avery Ludlow in wide brimmed hat

Pausing momentarily from a binge-watch of the TV show Succession to watch something else with Brian Cox in it – Red, a 2008 movie which went largely unnoticed. For good reason, it turns out, though there is a good film lurking in here somewhere. It was beset by problems – original director fired, Cox’s original co-star also fired – which is how come it’s Trygve Allister Diesen behind the camera and Kim Dickens in front of it with Cox (Cox is also an executive producer so might, Logan Roy style, have ordered the firings, or might not have – speculate away). It’s a John Wick-before-John Wick story of a guy whose dog gets killed, which … Read more

A Woman in Winter

Jamie Sives and Julie Gayet in A Woman in Winter

For a film-maker, Richard Jobson has an odd CV – a member of the new wave band The Skids (hit single: Into the Valley), a model, performance poet, actor, TV and radio presenter, Jobson arrived as a director with his partly autobiographical debut, 2003’s 16 Years of Alcohol, about growing up in a violent gang in Scotland. A Woman in Winter, his third feature, is also set in Scotland, but draws heavily on that country’s long alliance with France (anything but the English, eh) in its story of a quantum physicist (Jamie Sives) falling for a mysterious French woman (Julie Gayet) and simultaneously finding the parallel universes his theories have predicted. What we have here, … Read more