#maxine peak

[themancorialist]

Saint Peter’s Square, Manchester. 

[grande-caps]

Sceencaps || Black Mirror - Season 4 GALLERY LINK : [x] Quality : HD Screencaptures Amount : 6335 files  Resolution : 1280x720px

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[beautyinsteadofashes]

also i would die if anyone ever found a Miss Julie bootleg btw

[kwebtv]

Jenna Coleman, Matthew McNulty and Maxine Peake in “Room at the Top”. 

[ryansreviews]

Funny Cow: Review

Maxine Peake takes a stand (up)

Some of the very best stand-up comedians have drawn on their material to deal with the darker aspects of their lives, impressively managing to provoke laughter within the context of tough upbringings or battles with depression. From Funny People to Obvious Child, cinema has shown that laughter is quite literally the best medicine, a protective shell with which our heroes battle their demons. This is certainly the case for the titular heroine of Funny Cow, whose attempts to laugh off the abusive and controlling figures in her life makes for a disjointed but occassionally winning film. 

Set in 1970s Northern Ireland, we follow the fictional life story of the self-proclaimed ‘Funny Cow’ (Maxine Peake), who looks back on the trials and tribulations that shaped her into a dark and sardonic stand-up comic. Alternating between key stages of her life, we first see her as a perky child hurling turds at childhood bullies, and vainly challenging her abusive father. As an adult with a tougher exterior and a gift for “killing em with kindness”, Funny Cow looks to stand up comedy as a way to air out her frustrations, but struggles at a time when men like her aggressive, alpha male husband (Tony Pitts) try to mould her according to their expectations of womanhood.

Despite the presence of meaty themes like gender politics and domestic violence, a convoluted time structure means they never really hit home like they should. Director Adrian Shergold’s film lacks a clear focus, clearly striving to focus on significant parts of Funny Cow’s life, but struggling to settle on a central thread to bring it all together (one family reunion scene feels particularly out of place). Bizarrely, we also get only one opportunity to see Peake knocking a crowd dead with her stand-up material, which hilariously pokes fun at a heckler in the audience. It’s a delightful sequence with Peake in her element, and one that the film could’ve used more of.

It’s a shame really; because Peake’s marvelous central performance deserved a great film, and not just a good one. Spirited, thick-skinned and genuinely funny in spite of some tough circumstances, Peake ensures that her character’s plight is always engaging, compensating somewhat for some clumsy narrative gaps. Paddy Considine also offers likeable support as a sensitive but slightly pompous bookstore owner who appears as a possible love interest. Unfortunately, like his character, the film has all the right attributes but never feels quite right.

A funny yet hard-hitting character study is slightly mired by a baffling narrative timeframe, but Peake’s dazzling lead performance will keep you engaged during the film’s clumsier tonal shifts.

 ★★★

[owentheriddler]

Single Review – Johnny Marr – The Priest Around winter time spoken word tracks can bring to mind uncomfortable moments of insincerity topped off with ill-fitting knitwear and false tears but Johnny Marr's new single 'The Priest' might just be about as far from insincere as it's possible to get.

[scrubbytuft]

another witch is dead by the eccentronic research council and maxine peak  (fem witchy electro)

[stephengrahamappreciation]