Reviews
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DVD Review: The Bloodstained Butterfly
★★★★☆ Duccio Tessari’s 1971 film The Bloodstained Butterfly opens with scrolling text that paraphrases Kuki Shūzō’s A Philosopher’s Poetry and Poetics, stating that the present only exists in the shadow of the past and future. By twisting time through a combination of superb editing and the judicious withholding of crucial information, The Bloodstained Butterfly creates…
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Film Review: Lights Out
★★★☆☆ The fear of the dark is a common phobia that stems from a fear of the unknown; those unexplainable bumps in the night and the monsters hiding under the bed. The darkness, and the ghouls lurking within it, have provided the foundations for many a horror film, but rarely has it been employed as…
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Film Review: David Brent: Life on the Road
★★★☆☆ It may not come as too much of a surprise to learn that David Brent can’t quite carry an entire feature film all on his own – but there’s humour enough in Life on the Road to justify the project, even if it falls considerably short of the ensemble excellence that made The Office…
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Film Review: The Childhood of a Leader
★★★☆☆ We all wonder how momentous individuals came to be: what Hitler or Stalin were like as children; what happened to them. Did we know anyone like that? How far were any of us from becoming something similar? Brady Corbet’s debut feature The Childhood of a Leader, shoots for this target with all the subtlety…
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Film Review: Black
★★★☆☆ The now infamous Brussels municipality of Molenbeek provides the polemical backdrop to Black, a brutal modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet by directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. A place name tragically familiar, the urban area has become synonymous with ISIS and Europe’s struggle with terrorism. There is no allusion to fundamentalism here…
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Film Review: Almost Holy
★★★★☆ How do we respond to tragedy and suffering when we encounter them? When our societal institutions are strong, we tend to see it as the state’s role to right wrongs and promote justice. Though altruism and charity are welcome, it is the police, public healthcare and the welfare system that are expected to deal…
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DVD Review: Microwave Massacre
★☆☆☆☆ Boutique home entertainment label Arrow Video has made a name for itself as a purveyor of premium cult schlock, specialising in the rediscovery and restoration of semi-forgotten video nasties and trans-Atlantic exploitation cinema of the 1970s and 80s. The films in Arrow’s collection may be cheap, nasty and even offensive, but they are nevertheless…
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Film Review: Wiener-Dog
★★★★☆ If you’re in the business of selling dog food, you’ll know that dog owners are in the habit of projecting their own personality onto their precious pooches. What then, does a Wiener-Dog have to say about its owner? Hell, what does a dog resembling a frankfurter have to say about life, death, addiction and…
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Film Review: Valley of Love
★★★★☆ Rarely do we get treated to a moment so surprisingly amusing as the vision of Gérard Depardieu sporting a breezy, pineapple speckled button-up shirt and a baseball cap. It’s one of the precious moments of levity in Valley of Love that help to lift the spirits of this otherwise beautifully melancholic yarn of two…
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Film Review: The Shallows
★★★☆☆ The monster is always a metaphor. Life, death, loss, grief, fears, desires. In Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows, the extravagantly proportioned great white shark relentlessly stalking surfer-meal Nancy (Blake Lively) represents the raw power that is the grieving process. Heading down old Mexico way to visit a secluded beauty spot, where Nancy’s deceased mum chillaxed…