Festivals
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FrightFest 2017: Cult of Chucky review
★★★☆☆ As the adage goes “Don’t fuck with the Chuck”, and the rule still applies. The maniacal doll is up to no good (for a change) in Don Mancini’s Cult of Chucky, a series revitalised from the remains of the Child’s Play series and showing no signs of slowing down.Following directly on from events in…
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FrightFest 2017: Our programme highlights
FrightFest is a genre fan’s Christmas – a Black Christmas, naturally. 2017 marks its 18th edition and the UK’s premier horror cinema festival has returned to what was always its best venue: The Empire Theatre in Leicester Square, now run by the Cineworld chain. Attendees will remember well the experience of sitting in that giant…
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Locarno 2017: Madame Hyde review
★★★☆☆ Isabelle Huppert stars as a beleaguered French science teacher who, following a lightning strike, sporadically transforms into a fire lady. Serge Bozon’s absurdist revision of Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale has some wonderful moments but doesn’t quite je kill it.Madame Gequil (Huppert) works in the Arthur Rimbaud High School and it is unclear what is…
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Locarno 2017: The First Lap review
★★★★☆ A young couple Ji-young (Kim Sae-byeok) and Su-hyeon (Cho Hyun-chul) reach a decisive moment in their lives in South Korean Kim Dae-hwan’s impressive slow-burner The First Lap, which received its world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival last week.South Korea is at a crossroads, embroiled in political demonstrations and a government on the…
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Locarno 2017: Stories of Love That Cannot Belong to This World review
★★☆☆☆ Italian writer-director Francesca Comencini adapts her own fraught, hysterical novel for the big screen in Stories of Love that Cannot Belong to this World, which remains as fraught, hysterical and unbearable as her protagonist – even via a new medium.Lucia Mascino plays Claudia, a literature professor who lives in Rome and is obsessed with…
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Locarno 2017: Sparring review
★★★☆☆ Premiering at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival, Samuel Jouy’s feature debut Sparring sees Mathieu Kassovitz star as an ageing slugger in a boxing movie which mixes up the below the belt pounding of Fat City with the emotional jabs of The Champ.Steve (Kassovitz) is a veteran boxer coming to the end of his…
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Locarno 2017: Person to Person review
★★☆☆☆ Multiple New York stories interlace in Salt Lake City-born director Dustin Guy Defa’s Locarno 2017 select Person to Person, an ensemble piece which hails back to early John Sayles and Jim Jarmusch for inspiration but doesn’t quite live up to its heavyweight influences.Bene (Bene Coopersmith) gets a call about a rare Charlie Parker record;…
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Locarno 2017: Good Manners review
★★★☆☆ A beguiling, baffling and occasionally beautiful work which premiered at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival, Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra’s Good Manners is a genre-hopping tale of class, race, sexuality and werewolves in modern day São Paulo.Clara (Isabél Zuaa) goes for a job interview as a nanny for a wealthy and pregnant young…
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Locarno 2017: Gemini review
★★★☆☆ Hollywood is never happier than when looking at Hollywood. From the polished, ironic magnificence of The Player to the lo-fi grunge of The Canyons, the starry side of LA has swallowed its own tail on numerous occasions, much to its great satisfaction. Along similar lines follows recent Locarno offering Gemini.With Gemini, former mumblecore meister…
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Locarno 2017: Dog review
★★☆☆☆ When Jacques Blanchot (Vincent Macaigne) loses everything – his wife, his son, his house – he finds comfort first in buying a dog, before increasingly behaving like one. Receiving its world premiere at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival, Samuel Benchetrit’s Dog might be barking, but has it got the requisite bite?Kafka’s famous novella…