by Cookie N Screen

Expectation is a wrought thing for a passionate film fan. The pressure put on films to charm and delight you can be too much, failing to rise to whatever preconceived notion of excellence you had. It was a mixture of my love for Zach Braff, from years of watching Scrubs, and word of mouth that this was a phenomenal film that weighted some very misguided expectations (that, I’ll admit, were very wrong of me to have). When I finally got to see Garden State, I was heavily disappointed. Even when I got over the hopes, watching it again later on in life, not much had changed to alter that dismay.

This little anecdote is probably best needed for you to understand while I’m hitting stop on an acclaimed cult indie hit.

by Cookie N Screen

Richard Linklater is pretty much the darling of the film industry at the moment. It’s not as if he never fell out of that namesake. But since Boyhood landed and we were all treated to his 12 year project that studied time and changes in a suburban family, we all were in a Linklater puddle of goo and have rightly showered presents on the man in the form of awards. During the process of creating Boyhood, the phenomenal director created films around that as well – I mean, that’s a massive feat. There isn’t a bad one on his roster either. From Dazed & Confused to Before Midnight, Linklater has been creating this utterly humanistic, beautifully romantic and astutely funny films.

And then there is School of Rock which may not feel a lot like Linklater but boy, is it a bleeding riot of a film.

by Cookie N Screen 

Reese Witherspoon is a wonderful and Oscar winning actress. She has developed so much more from her young years where she may have done a "McConoughey" and stared in an abundance of pretty poor romantic comedies. Though doing those roles leaped her into our minds and she certainly garnered some acclaim for poignancy and astute acting in such films as Pleasantville (highly underrated). She earned her Academy Award by playing the real life singer June Carter and has since starred in films that have pushed her beyond excellence. Wild seems to be that career performance where we all sit back and go; “erm..wow.”   

by Hayley Charlesworth

When one thinks about the most sadistic horrors inflicted during the Holocaust, the people that come to mind are the usual suspects: Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and the like. One slightly less well-known but perhaps the most depraved of all was Dr Josef Mengele, the geneticist who inflicted unspeakable experiments on prisoners of war. 


But Wakolda, the Argentinian film released through Peccadillo Pictures, does not concern itself with this grizzly history, instead telling in an eerie, detached fashion the story of Mengele’s time in Argentina.