The Draw is commendable as a directorial debut, and impressive considering a modest indie budget, but I have to say I was quite underwhelmed. This film feels like taking the plot of a black mirror episode (think Hang the DJ or Arkangel), stretching it out into a feature length film, and making the plot way more convoluted than necessary. The reason the black mirror concepts hit home is because they focus on one small element of a technological advancement, allowing…

Follows a family’s adjustment to modern life, having tragically lost the matriarch to cancer. It is filmed in that highly polished documentary style, which can be a slightly hard pill to swallow, insofar as it tries to capture some very heartfelt moments in realtime, whilst retaining that cinematic flair, so to speak. But I found they pulled it off with a very high level of authenticity and sincerity, and the stylised nature of it only served to enhance the real…

Whilst I was expecting more of a political drama, instead I’m Still Here is an intimate and powerful exploration of grief and acceptance, and it’s incredibly well done. The pacing and authentic writing really helps you connect to the family, so that despite the long runtime I stayed heavily invested until the end. I have often found that films ‘based on a true story’ suffer from a certain insensitive and melodramatic tendency, but this film treats the characters and events with…