ALSO STREAMING
7500 (N/A)
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An intelligent B-movie thriller starring Joseph Gordon-levitt as a commercial airline pilot trying to land his plane after it’s hijacked by Islamic extremists, this debut feature from up-and-coming German director Patrick Vollrath (Oscar-nominated for his 2015 short film Everything Will Be Okay) distinguishes itself by never leaving the confined space of the cockpit, a creative decision allows Vollrath to deliver a claustrophobic singlelocation thriller (à la Locke and
Buried) driven by a quietly powerful lead performance. Gordon-levitt is as contained here as the setting, favouring naturalism over big actorly gestures, melodramatic flourishes or, as the situation intensifies, Bruce Willis style-heroics. The film is at its best during this early escalation of the crisis, especially as the stakes for the Gordon-levitt’s character, Tobias, become even more personal and Vollrath contrasts the (relative) calm of the newly secured cockpit with the flashes of violence and chaos we can see erupting on the silent video screen that monitors the tiny space just outside the cabin door. Perhaps inevitably the tension dissipates slightly as the film moves into its final third and Tobias attempts to reason with the youngest hijacker (sympathetically played by Omid Mema), but this is a film in which the protagonist’s low-key heroism is predicated on his own battle to hold on to his humanity under intolerable circumstances.
Streaming on Amazon Prime
Resistance (15)
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Low-key heroism is also at the heart of this based-on-fact drama detailing the role a pre-fame Marcel Marceau played in helping Jewish children escape to Switzerland from Nazioccupied France during the Second World War. Jesse Eisenberg plays Marceau as a struggling artist whose future calling as – in the parlance of the film – “the world’s most important mime” is crystallised by his reluctantat-first devotion to this higher, more urgent cause. Though Eisenberg brings a certain level of panache to his performance, the film itself is structured and executed in very conventional fashion.
Available for download on digital
platforms including itunes, Amazon and Youtube
Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo (15)
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Danny Trejo, the Chicano co-star of countless films and TV shows (among them Heat, Con Air, From Dusk till
Dawn and Breaking Bad) recounts his extraordinary life-story in this inspiring documentary. A hardened criminal who got addicted to heroin at the age of 12, Trejo spent his teens and early 20s in some of the most brutal penitentiaries in the US before turning his life around by getting sober and working as a youth drug councillor, a job that eventually led to a random encounter on the set of the Oscar-nominated Runaway
Train with its writer Eddie Bunker, a fellow ex-con who got him work as a consultant and an extra on the film and then helped him launch his screen career. Throughout, Trejo comes across as someone eternally thankful for getting a second chance being able to do some good in the world.
Available for download on digital
platforms including itunes, Amazon and Youtube
To Kid or Not to Kid (N/A)
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In this thoughtful and insightful documentary, New York-based Brit filmmaker Maxine Trump turns the camera on herself to explore the societal taboos surrounding women who choose not to have children. In her 40s, happily married and actively enjoying her lifestyle travelling the world making documentaries, Trump begins the film still unsure if she wants to have children or not. But as she starts to unpack the reasons for her ongoing reluctance, she explores the strange societal stigma attached to women who identify as childfree. ■
Streaming on Amazon Prime