A melancholic journey into the past, Sunday Worship is a thought provoking short film tackling old age, loss and memory.

Thoroughly relatable to any Brit, Sunday Worship hit home for me more than blockbusters such as Still Alice as it chose to deal with a topic through the eyes of the everyday man down the pub. Choosing to ignore his issues, even his wife appears oblivious as she tries to understand what’s been changing in her husband’s life and why he continues to forget the little things.

Sunday Worship culminates in a beautifully put together ending with a thoroughly tear-jerking reveal.

https://vimeo.com/219104886

Sunday Worship suffers from some odd cutting choices and a strange switch of style throughout that I felt could have been worked better, but Paul Holbrook & Sam Dawe have done a fantastic job working in a surprise ending that’s both shocking and compelling, but importantly realistic as well as heartbreaking. The undoubted star of the film is Brian Croucher (Eastenders, Blake’s 7), who you can barely tell is acting whilst Annabelle Leventon (London Bridge, Wimbledon) who plays his wife put it’s an honest and good performance as the two stars provide a performance as close to real life as you’re going to get.

Sunday Worship took its time to warm up, but it’s one hundred percent worth a watch if you can find it. I’ll certainly be looking out for the next one by these guys.

By Orla Smith.

For her opera directing debut, Sofia Coppola has chosen Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata – and no more fitting a choice could have been made.

Translated from Italian to English, the title becomes The Fallen Woman, so there’s no wonder that Coppola found an interest in it. Her oeuvre of films (six in total, including the soon to be released The Beguiled) is proof enough of her interest in women who find themselves apart from society, either physically or emotionally. The girls in The Virgin Suicides are locked away by their parents. In Lost in Translation, Charlotte grapples with an isolation she can’t quite put into words. Away from her home, Marie Antoinette is surrounded by riches, servants and companions at Versailles, but still so often feels like it’s her against the world.

In La Traviata, our heroine is Violetta, a courtesan recovering from an illness. What is otherwise a lively opening act – set amidst a party she has thrown to celebrate her newfound health – begins with more sombre imagery. The orchestra’s mysterious opening strains accompany the image of a ghostly white staircase emerging from the darkness, as if it is being formed by a beam of moonlight. As more light enters the stage, three chandeliers loom from the ceiling like spindly ghosts. Violetta descends slowly onto the scene, head down, draped in a heavy black dress.

It is an opera in three acts, with four distinct sets. With a story and music so known and set in stone, Coppola’s contribution – and what people will be watching for with eyes peeled – is in staging, sets and costumes. In that sense, she’s a perfect choice. Each of her films is distinguishable by what her characters wear, whether it’s Scarlett Johansson’s pink underwear that opens Lost in Translation, or Marie Antoinette’s stream of elaborate dresses, once again often making room for pink.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJhFeRGXbiQ

That millennial pink is one of Coppola’s aesthetic trademarks, so it’s notable that it only appears in Violetta’s clothes – which are designed by Valentino – in the final act.

She begins in a serious black, with a lifestyle that is light and playful. But by the end, when her prospects are bleak, she reverts to the innocent pink of girlhood – an association that Coppola has spent her whole career building up. It’s one of her greatest touches to the material: that the end of Violetta’s story should be made all the more tragic by her hopeful dress, which shows her longing to return to a simpler time.

Other than a striking red dress Violetta wears in Act 2, which allows her to boldly stand out against a sea of suited men and calmly dressed women, the costumes Coppola chooses are not made to pop. Given her penchant for beige, that shouldn’t be a surprise; the women’s dresses never go far beyond pastel, and the men are all in black and white. Set against, similarly coloured sets, this creates a picture of a decadent lifestyle in which everything blends into one writhing mass. It is not an exciting vision, but a grand and beautiful one.

The sets – which were designed by Batman production designer Nathan Crowley – are sparse. Each of the four locations are carefully considered and gratefully not overstuffed.

The whole production depends heavily on them, as is evident in the fact that the individual acts are named after the places in which they are set. At the beginning of Act 2, Violetta’s Country House Outside Paris, we are placed inside a massive greenhouse of a building, the entire back wall made of looming panes of glass. It is open and idyllic, fit with two giant trees on either side of the stage and furniture spaced neatly around the space.

It’s less elaborate than Violetta’s previous home, but it is easy to see why this space may be preferable. Coppola evokes the feeling that the end of Act 1 was an escape to this new home. That first set begins as a place of jubilant celebration, but when all the guests are gone and the large staircase seems like the only source of light, it feels more like a dungeon. Violetta sings, and in turn she hears the muffled singing of Alfredo – the man from which she has just received a proposal – from above, as if coming from the heavens. Through song, she wills herself to ascend the stairs, and you will her too – the feeling that she is breaking free from shackles is made tangible by the production’s staging.

It’s the final act, Violetta’s Bedroom, that is the most evocative.

This time, the window does not fill the back wall. Instead, it is dwarfed by a massive expanse of darkness. The lighting remains dim throughout, and Violetta’s previously commanding presence is infantilised. She clings to what she one had, swaying back and forth across the stage in vain search of something out of reach.

Violetta’s hopeless desperation is beautifully and heartbreakingly captured by a powerful lead performance from Francesca Dotto. She embodies the frailty at the end, but also the exuberant energy that Violetta holds throughout most of the opera. In Act 1, when she is alone in her salon, fretting over whether or not she should go with Alfredo, her interaction with the materials around her is particularly evocative. She drapes herself over chairs and armrests in despair, at one point grabbing onto a piece of black feathery material and running her fingers through it as if holding on for dear life. This purposeful touching gives tangibility to Violetta’s interaction with her surroundings. It gives life to her life within these places.

In what is otherwise a smartly executed production, there is one thing that might disappoint. Being as esteemed of a director within the film industry as she is, Sofia Coppola’s name has drawn crowds to this new production of La Traviata. She delivers it with all the quality you might expect, but none of the daring.

Coming in from a different industry, having made her name with films that aren’t afraid to be bold, some may expect Coppola to have added something unexpected to the opera – something completely out there and unprecedented that might shake up expectations. It’s closest in style and story to her 2006 film Marie Antoinette, a film which was memorably anachronistic and contained a number of playful flourishes. However, it’s clear that experimentation wasn’t what Coppola was going for, and it would be unfair to hold her to a standard that we wouldn’t for any director who has made their name solely in opera. She hasn’t tried to bring filmic influences into opera, but rather embraced the artform in all of its classical appeal. In that respect, it goes off without a hitch.

La Traviata will play in UK cinemas nationwide on 9th July.

By Last Caress.

Detectives Rebecca Faraway (Sarah Beck Mather) and Eli Smith (Andonis Anthony) are attending a crime scene on their patch of greater London. It’s grisly. A man lies supine, mostly rotted away having been left in a damp rat-infested cellar, and surrounded by ritualistic, perhaps even Satanic markings on the floor and wall. It’s not the first such scene Faraway and Smith have witnessed this week, either; they’ve a serial killer on their hands.

Their investigations lead them to the smoothly confident Michael Sweet (Jamie Satterthwaite), a partner at the property development firm who own the site at which the rotted corpse was found. In fact as the bodies mount up, their investigations lead them back to Michael Sweet over and again. He seems unperturbed, though. What he DOES seem, however, is remarkably interested in Faraway. Who is he? What’s he up to? Why his interest in Rebecca?

In addition to the case, Faraway has problems of her own. She is struggling with the sale of her house. a move forced upon her by a messy divorce which also has her on prescription medication. She is also met ceaselessly and by more-or-less everyone – including her own detective partner – with a distressing amount of misogyny. “I really need to get one of those,” leers Smith to a uniformed sergeant with reference to a nearby WPC. “I thought you already had one,” replies the sergeant, looking at Faraway. As the case progresses, Faraway’s grip on reality begins to loosen, and then crumble altogether. Fatigue brought upon by the many stresses each day brings? It would be perfectly understandable were that the case. But is there something else happening here?

Charismata, co-written/directed by Tor Mian (The Milky Way) and Andy Collier (for whom Charismata represents a full-length debut in the director’s chair), is a gleefully creepy piece of grand guignol, evoking the style of David Fincher’s Se7en with the dread of a Clive Barker tale.

Sarah Beck Mather imbues the role of Rebecca Faraway with a hard-nosed shell disguising an increasingly justifiable panic which becomes evermore evident as events begin to engulf her. Detective Smith is something of a bigoted dickhead and yet Andonis Anthony succeeds from the off in keeping him relatable and even likeable, a necessary quality as Charismata moves into its final third. The movie is sprinkled sparingly with black humour – having been ribbed by Smith for vomiting at a previous crime scene, a deeply irritated Faraway proceeds to vomit at the crime scene – and, in that spirit, Johnny Vivash provides some welcome respite from the gloom and noir as a put-upon manager whose security firm appears to have been foiled by the serial killer at every turn. For the most part though, directors Mian and Collier ratchet up both the tension and the grue quickly and relentlessly throughout a crisply shot and framed picture. Charismata keeps on smacking away at you, literally up to the final frame.

Now, it’s not perfect. In places, the dialogue feels clunky. “You’re in for a treat.” “Bloody?” “Like a menstruating virgin at a gang-bang.” Also, in one or two areas (not many, but enough), the visual effects are hamstrung somewhat by budgetary limitations. But these are minor distractions really which shouldn’t detract from what is, overall, a wonderfully atmospheric and gruesome horror/thriller. Recommended.

Visit the official website for Charismata HERE.

By Marti Dols Roca.

His breakout film Robots of Brixton became viral and that was all but a surprise; considering how mesmerizingly beautiful, thought provoking and unsettlingly appealing it was both in terms of image and sound. His name is Kibwe Tavares and he is known for his CGI-real action fused videos that tend to have a social message hidden beneath the magic of its scenes.

His latest project Robot and Scarecrow tells the story of an impossible love between the dittos. Specificities of the piece aside, this is an excellent example of how to narrate one of the nine or ten stories that exist (impossible love, war between brothers, coming of age, rise and fall…) in a different and unique way; consequently, the audience gets double satisfaction as they will be transported to a world in which the same old story will be as meaningful and surprising as it was the first time they heard it. And, as far as the writer of this article is concerned, this is why we tell stories: to put a frame in the things that matter to us without knowing we are; to enjoy a tale that once it’s over and we are in our bed staring at the ceiling, we will understand how it directly relates to us or someone we know (and still this won’t take our enjoyment at hearing it away).

Robot is an enslaved dancer, as so many amongst their race in fiction and present and near future real life, whose “product life” is about to expire; however, her “bosses” know they can still use her one last time to perform up on stage of this sunny, colored and badass looking music festival.

Scarecrow is tired of having the wind bringing to him the occasional beats and basses from the festival nearby; and so he decides to break the chains that tie him to a wooden stick and let someone else scare the crows while he has a good time crazily dancing as the people around him do.

Robot is on stage doing what she does best, what she was programmed to do, under the amazed and drug triggered stare of the ecstatic audience.  Until all her circuits (Futurama, allow me the homage) fail and she is removed from stage. Meanwhile, Scarecrow is another extravagant individual in this party of music and color and seems to be finding his very own hip moving style.

As she defies neuroscience and walks once more towards the charismatic Scarecrow in the crowd; the wild audiences do what wild audiences do at some point during these events: tear this amazing piece of moving decoration apart. And therefore Scarecrow gets Glastonburied. But, as Chewbacca once showed us with C3PO, Robot is not going to let this one pass and she takes the remaining pieces of what once was the best Scarecrow dancer the world has ever seen and manages to bring him back to life.

Now, Robot and Scarecrow walk hand by hand through the tragic, and as unavoidable and beautiful as dawn, outcome of the music festival. Until, alas, neuroscience seems to be more powerful than love and Robot’s “product life” sadly reaches its finale; leaving Scarecrow to remember her by staring at the massive scream that shows the highlights of the festival. It never was easy to be non human in a world of dittos.

You can enjoy Kibwe Tavares work online for free and, as far as the writer of this article is concerned, you definitely should. It’s subtle, gorgeous, the sound design is absolutely impressive and all of this surrounds good and meaningful stories. There’s not much more you can ask for really.

Oh, Michael Fassbender executive produces.

After the deflating experience of catching Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 on its opening weekend in 2007, and suffering through diminishing returns with Marc Webb’s failed reboot, Spider-Man’s MCU debut in Captain America: Civil War delivered a pitch-perfect tease of what we could expect from an unholy alliance between Sony and Marvel Studios. Indie director Jon Watts (Clown/Cop Car) manages to nip at this behemoth superhero property with a radioactive mix of John Hughes teen comedy and a genuinely endearing turn from Tom Holland as the fledgling Spidey.

In the run-up to Homecoming I’ve seen a bunch of memes professing to which previous actor portrayed Peter Parker/ Spider-Man better. To my mind, one was clearly a better Parker, while the other embodied the wall crawling, smart mouthed super-persona far greater. While these actors suffered from the “Grease Effect”, of being (visibly) ten years too old to portray a high school student, here Holland blows them both out of the water with his youthful exuberance, hyper-kinetic excitement and crushing awkwardness. He perfectly encapsulates the dichotomy of a kid shouldering the weight of such gargantuan responsibility, but with maths tests, chemistry classes and the impatient ache to be considered “grown-up”

Rounding out Peter Parker’s classmates are best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), who provides the outsider perspective, full of compassionate, dorky excitement, Liz (Laura Harrier), Parker’s brilliant and outgoing friend (…and crush), Michelle (Zendaya), who is very much the “Ally Sheedy in Breakfast Club” type, and personal favourite, Flash (Tony Revolori), who’s less of a jock and more of a spoiled “dick”. I could’ve spent two hours just with these characters in the high school setting as they provide the warmth and several belly laughs, which I’m still tickled by now.

Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May is used sparingly but to great effect. I’m thankful we’ve not had to endure yet another passing of Uncle Ben as I’ve become desensitised to his murder in much the same way I’ve switched off from Bruce Wayne’s orphanage.

For the first time in a very long time we have a villain that is not only (somewhat) sympathetic but also terrifying. Michael Keaton’s working class version of The Vulture is a detour from the usual, “scientist goes mad” shtick we’ve seen from previous franchise iterations. He has a genuine reason to be doing what he does and while you never root for him, there’s an understanding as to why he becomes the baddie, which is something that can’t be said for most antagonists in the MCU. Rounding out his team is “Tom Hard-lite”, Logan Marshall Green, the consistently great Bokeem Woodbine and Michael Chernus. Each character is used sparingly, managing to balance multiple villains in a way Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 were completely unable to do.

It is an utter joy to see Tom Holland’s portrayal of Spider-Man incorporated within the MCU. RDJ’s Tony Stark and Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan are more than cameos but their inclusion never feels intrusive. Instead they further the story in a way that is in-keeping with what has come before but also offering a new angle on this well-worn superhero mythos. For the keen eye there are numerous Easter eggs and links to the franchise, there’s the obligatory Stan Lee cameo and you’ll get a couple rewarding credit stingers too.

Having received praise for his Doctor Strange score (which sounded remarkably similar to his work on the Star Trek reboot’quel) Michael Giacchino returns to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with what is without a doubt the most memorable, hummable and distinct theme of any Marvel property since John Ottman’s work on X-Men 2. Rousing and super-catchy, the Spider-Man: Homecoming suite has bored into my brain like all great earworms alongside Wonder Woman’s sonic rally cry.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is the funniest, scariest and most sincere portrayal of the wall crawler ever committed to film. While my fondness for Raimi’s second feature remains, I know I’ll be returning to Homecoming frequently for the comedy and sheer joy of Holland’s exceptional take on Spider-Man.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is released July 7th and we’ll be covering the film on the Sudden Double Deep podcast on Thursday 13th as part of our first birthday celebration.