Nikki Amuka-Bird Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – M. Night Shyamalan – 2021 – US – Cert. 15 – 108m

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A family is trapped on an idyllic beach where people age rapidly – out in cinemas on Friday, July 21st

This was adapted from the graphic novel Sandcastle written by Pierre Oscar Lévy and illustrated by Frederik Peeters which clearly has caught the imagination of M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, 1999; Unbreakable, 2000; Glass, 2019).

Guy and Prisca Capa (Gael García Bernal from Rosewater, Jon Stewart, 2017; No, Pablo Larrain, 2012 and Vicky Krieps from Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017) and their kids Maddox, 11 (Alexa Swinton) and Trent, 6 (Nolan River) are driven to their tropical holiday resort which Prisca can’t believe she found on the internet. Not that they are so lucky in their personal lives: she has been diagnosed with cancer and the couple have yet to tell their children of their impending divorce.

As they ponder what to do on their first day, the hotel offers them a chance to spend it at an exclusive beach alongside other select guests. These turn out to include surgeon Charles (Rufus Sewell from The Father, Florian Zeller, 2020) and his family – mother Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant), trophy wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee) and Kara, 6 (Kylie Begley) – as well as married couple Jarin (Ken Leung) and Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird).… Read the rest

The Personal History
Of David Copperfield

Director – Armando Ianucci – 2019 – UK – Cert. PG – 119m

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What the Dickens? A Victorian recalls his life from birth to middle age and the many people he encountered along the way – on VoD in June

The mid-19th century novel The Personal History Of David Copperfield is considered Charles Dickens’ masterpiece. Narrated in the first person by the eponymous David, it tells of one man’s life from birth through a series of adventures and encounters with a motley crew of relatives, friends and associates that seem to span the social breadth of Victorian England.

To cut the novel’s tale down to a manageable movie length, director Ianucci and his co-writer Simon Blackwell have dumped certain characters and subplots to focus on others. As with the director’s previous outing The Death Of Stalin (2017), the final film half works yet is beset by strange casting choices – actors playing Russians sporting a variety of English dialects in Stalin, various BAME actors playing roles that aren’t always entirely believable in terms of their ethnicity in Copperfield. That includes the film’s lead Dev Patel, who plays David convincingly as a wide-eyed innocent… [Read more]

The Personal History Of David Copperfield is out in the UK on Friday, January 24th.… Read the rest