Festivals
-
FrightFest 2012: ‘Outpost II’ review
★★☆☆☆ Outpost II: Black Sun (2012), the new Nazi zombie-fest from director Steve Barker which stars Richard Coyle and Catherine Steadman, receives its UK Premiere this weekend at the 13th edition of Film4 FrightFest. Sadly, the film seems destined to leave undead fans distinctly cold due to its surprisingly dull and pedestrian narrative. Dead Snow…
-
FrightFest 2012: ‘Eurocrime!’ review
★★★☆☆ If the titles Milano Calibro 9 (1972), Street Law (1974) and Napoli Violenta (1976) mean anything to you, then you might want to check out Mike Malloy’s new doc Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s (2012), which affectionately documents Italy’s decade-long love affair with the cop film genre. The…
-
FrightFest 2012: ‘The Victim’ review
★☆☆☆☆ Cult actor Michael Biehn makes his directorial debut with The Victim (2011), screening at this year’s Film4 FrightFest. This weak attempt at grindhouse opens with two local cops taking two strippers into the woods for a ‘private party’. One of the crooked cops gets carried away and ends up murdering one of the strippers…
-
FrightFest 2012: ‘Stitches’ review
★★★★☆ Writer/director Conor McMahon showcases the cutting-edge humour of edgy British comedian Ross Noble in his feature debut, making Film4 FrightFest entry Stitches (2012) a pleasant surprise in a gross-out, schoolboy fashion. There are certainly a number of marked similarities to that other anarchic jester jape, Funny Man (1994). However, where that slice of infantile…
-
FrightFest 2012: ‘V/H/S’ review
★★★★☆ Ensemble effort V/H/S (2012) is just the type of film Amicus Productions would have churned out if they were still active. A portmanteau horror, with a returning narrative thread to string the short films together, V/H/S blends together a series of overly familiar and somewhat tired genre tropes and conventions. As with the Amicus…
-
FrightFest 2012: ‘Rec 3: Genesis’ review
★★★☆☆ One of the most anticipated films the play at this year’s 13th Film4 FrightFest, [Rec] 3: Genesis (2012) is the third instalment of Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza’s (on solo directorial duty here) much-admired Spanish zombie franchise. However, traditionalist Rec fans may well be in for a surprise with Plaza’s lone vision, which offers…
-
FrightFest 2012: ‘Cockneys vs Zombies’ review
★★★☆☆ Matthias Hoene’s zomventure (he dislikes the phrase ‘Zomody’), Cockneys vs Zombies (2012) has the kind of moniker you’d expect to discover whilst rummaging through the bargain bin in a petrol station. Yet whilst this remark may not be entirely inappropriate – Hoene’s homage to London’s East End is undeniably cheap and tacky – behind…
-
FrightFest 2012: ‘Berberian Sound Studio’ review
★★★★☆ From the creative mind of Peter Strickland, the director behind 2009’s hugely promising Katlin Varga, comes the long-awaited Berberian Sound Studio (2012). Starring our very own Toby Jones amongst a host of all-Italian talent, Strickland’s Film4 FrightFest entry (having already screened at the revamped Edinburgh Film Festival) is an audiovisual tour-de-force, doing for giallo…
-
Cannes 2012: ‘Sightseers’ review
★★★☆☆ Showing in the Directors’ Fortnight strand of the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Ben Wheatley’s Kill List (2011) follow-up Sightseers (2012) is an unexpectedly lighthearted jaunt – with serial killing of course – but a jaunt nonetheless. Taken from a script developed by its two leads Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, initially intended as a…
-
Cannes 2012: ‘On the Road’ review
★★☆☆☆ It’s been a long journey from the original publication of Jack Kerouac’s beat novel On the Road in 1957 to this Walter Salles-directed big screen adaptation. Over half a century has passed, and in the meantime the cultural influence of the ‘Beat Generation’ has inspired music and film on many different levels. Salles’ On…