Festivals
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BFI London Film Festival 2012: Programme announced
The official programme for this year’s 56th BFI London Film Festival was announced to the press today at the Odeon Leicester Square. As previously revealed, Tim Burton’s stop-motion animation Frankenweenie 3D will open the 12-day festival, with Mike Newell’s new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations closing. With only 14 World Premieres across the 225-strong…
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FrightFest 2012: ‘Sinister’ review
★★★☆☆ As mainstream US horrors go, Scott Derrickson’s latest twist on the found footage formula, Sinister (2012), provides an enjoyable ride of bumps-in-the-night thrills and spills. The traditionally solid Ethan Hawke stars as a true-crime writer (a clear link to his turn earlier this year in French psychological drama The Woman in the Fifth), who…
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FrightFest 2012: ‘After’ review
★☆☆☆☆ You won’t find many more misguided and excruciatingly dull features at this year’s Film4 FrightFest than Ryan Smith’s disastrous cut-and-paste job After (2012). Shamelessly plundering a number of the very best horror fantasies from recent years including Donnie Darko (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), After’s wafer-thin, ludicrous plot floats from one inconsequential revelation to…
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FrightFest 2012: ‘Dead Sushi’ review
★★☆☆☆ To misquote the crows from Disney’s 1941 classic Dumbo; “I’ve seen a horse fly, I’ve seen a dragon fly, I’ve seen a house fly, but I ain’t never seen sushi fly.” Many of the good folks who attended this year’s Film4 FrightFest, however, will have no need of such a statement if they managed…
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FrightFest 2012: ‘Sleep Tight’ review
★★★★☆ One of the stand-out films of this year’s Film4 FrightFest, Jaume Balagueró’s Sleep Tight (Mientras duermes, 2011) is an incredibly nuanced Spanish chiller, featuring a magnificent central performance from Luis Tosar. With nods to voyeuristic classics such as Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) and Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), Balagueró proves himself an astute director,…
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FrightFest 2012: ‘Chained’ review
★☆☆☆☆ Surveillance (2008) director Jennifer Lynch returns to Film4 FrightFest screens this weekend with serial killer horror Chained (2012), which stars old-hand Vincent D’Onofrio and Eamon Farren. The film revolves around Bob (D’Onofrio), a taxi-driving psychopath who captures a young boy (Evan Bird) after murdering and raping his mother. Once chained up in Bob’s remote…
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FrightFest 2012: ‘Wrong Turn 4’ review
★☆☆☆☆ Released in 2003, the inaugural Wrong Turn was an average slasher/horror that left no real impression on the genre and grossed a healthy, yet far from exemplary amount at the box office. Somehow, that film has now spawned three sequels (four by the end of this year), the latest entitled Bloody Beginnings (2012). Declan…
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FrightFest 2012: ‘Kill Zombie!’ review
★★☆☆☆ There’s little pretension to be found in Martjin Smits and Erwin Ven Den Eshof’s ‘Dutch of the Dead’ outing Kill Zombie! (Zombibi, 2012), which receives its UK premiere at this year’s Film4 FrightFest. This amateurish horror comedy ostensibly does what it sets out to do – kill zombies – in large numbers and by…
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FrightFest 2012: ‘The Arrival of Wang’ review
★★★☆☆ Italian directing duo the Manetti brothers continue their genre-hoping voyage through the cinematic universe with The Arrival of Wang (2011), an extra-terrestrial sci-fi horror that’ll no doubt titillate and captivate audiences at this year’s Film4 FrightFest. Gaia (Francesca Cuttica) is an Italian interpreter who’s persuaded by a shady government agent (Ennio Fantastichini) to translate…
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FrightFest 2012: ‘Paura’ review
★☆☆☆☆ Some films just leave you feeling sullied, and sadly Paura 3D (2012) is one such monstrosity. It would be good to find something positive to say about this faux-giallo by the Italian Manetti brothers – behind the far-superior sci-fi The Arrival of Wang (2011) – but sometimes words just fail you. If you see…