The great British actor Daniel Kaluuya makes his directorial debut with this competent dystopian drama set in a near-future London. The English capital is a divided society where housing projects have been scrapped and the ghettoised poor can be forcibly ejected from their homes at a moment’s notice.
“This isn’t your mother’s Mean Girls.” You’re having a laugh with that tagline. Alas, it’s been 20 years since Tina Fey’s endlessly quotable satire changed the way we think about Wednesdays. Time flies, and this confidently choreographed remake is in fact a vibrant adaptation of a flashy stage musical inspired by the original film. Confused? Don’t be.
Snow is falling on Barton Academy, a prestigious New England boarding school where the well-heeled send their sons. There, Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is a tweedy classics professor who enjoys humiliating his pupils for the slightest academic inadequacies.
There was more sympathy for Muammar Gaddafi’s regime here in Ireland than elsewhere in the West. Libya under Gaddafi achieved much in terms of its secularism, its commitment to education and healthcare and the relative equality of the sexes that Libyans enjoyed.
There are dancers, sweaty and fast, old friends reuniting and new friends meeting. Here, you’ll find almost every usual hallmark of a night out well spent. But notably absent from the hand of every outstretched arm is a drink. And that’s kind of the point. It’s a sober rave, and nobody here is under the influence.