★★★☆☆ Ahead of Halloween, this week the BFI rerelease three spooky stories for children from legendary British production company The Children’s Film Foundation. The Man from Nowhere (1976) is a Victorian age tale focusing on orphan Alice (Sarah Hollis-Andrews) who, sent to live with her uncle George (Ronald Adam), encounters Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Every now and then you suspect that a film gains cult status simply because it’s seldom been seen. Take for instance Saxon Logan’s Sleepwalker (1984). So few people have sampled this bizarre horror-thriller since its initial release that it was doubted as to whether it even existed at all. Continue Reading
★★★★☆ The latest work from German auteur Douglas Sirk to get the Masters of Cinema treatment (following the rerelease of The Tarnished Angels earlier this month), 1958’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die is remarkable not only for its sympathetic portrayal of disheartened and disenfranchised German soldiers Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Italian documentarian Andrea Segre’s debut feature about the exploitation of immigrant workers in his native country, Shun Li and the Poet (2011), packs an undeniably powerful punch. A young, unmarried Chinese woman, Shun Li (Tao Zhao), is in debt to the men who arranged and paid for her travel Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Régis Roinsard scores a palpable hit with debut feature Populaire (2012), a romantic comedy about speed-typing, starring Déborah Francois, Romain Duris and The Artist’s Bérénice Bejo. Set in France at the tail end of the 1950s, Rose (Francois) a shopkeeper’s daughter dreams of escaping provincial life and making something Continue Reading