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DVD Review: Getting Any?
★★☆☆☆ Driven by bedroom walls covered in pornography and his childish erotic fantasies, Asao (Duncan) is a young man determined to get laid. Through a series of schemes to attract women, he finds himself in increasingly bizarre and surreal scenarios.No one could ever accuse the Japanese auteur ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano of being a conventional filmmaker.…
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DVD Review: George A. Romero Between Night and Dawn
★★★☆☆ Following the success of Night of the Living Dead, the late George A. Romero became something of a one-man movie studio in his adopted city of Pittsburgh. Romero didn’t opt for the obvious and took a much more unconventional, challenging route.Given that reluctance to adhere to expectations, it’s a pity that his sophomoric effort…
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Film Review: North by Northwest
★★★★★ Trouble lurks around every corner in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest. Sinister motives, international espionage and a captivating beauty have ad exec Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) on the run from the law across the USA.Throughout his career the Master of Suspense frequently pushed innocent, unsuspecting men into hot water. From The 39…
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Film Review: Jungle
★★★★☆ Based on Yossi Ghinsberg’s memoir, Jungle tells the true story of a man’s survival when he became lost for almost three weeks in the Amazon. It’s a thrilling tale, and amazing to know Ghinsberg managed to stay alive on his own, against all odds.21-year old Israeli Yossi Ghinsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), has finished his mandatory…
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Film Review: I Am Not a Witch
★★★★☆ Rungano Nyoni’s debut feature I Am Not a Witch opens with a little girl (Maggie Mulubwa) arriving in a rural Zambian village with no parents and no name. Accused of witchcraft by one resident, others start chipping in with anecdotes of the girl’s mischief.The local police are called and the girl is quickly shipped…
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Interview: S. Craig Zahler, dir. Brawl in Cell Block 99
American genre director S. Craig Zahler came to the attention of audiences and critics alike with his stunning 2015 horror western hybrid Bone Tomahawk. Zahler is back with another supremo slice of glorious B-movie pulp, in the form of Brawl in Cell Block 99. Martyn Conterio: How detailed are your scripts? I ask because you’re a…
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Film Review: Brawl in Cell Block 99
★★★★☆ The second feature from S. Craig Zahler, Brawl in Cell Block 99 is a grisly saga about a brick shithouse mechanic turned drugs courier fighting for the lives of his wife and unborn child. Sent down after a deal goes wrong, Bradley’s troubles are just beginning.If 2015’s Bone Tomahawk, a Howard Hawks-type western spliced…
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Criterion Review: The Lure
★★★★☆ As far as synopses go, a Polish-vampire-mermaid-1980s-musical certainly captures attention. But debut director Agnieszka Smoczynska’s violent, sexy fairytale The Lure is more than the sum of its parts; a luscious, strangely enchanting watch.Sirens Silver and Golden (Marta Mazurek and Michalina Olszanska respectively) loiter on the shores of Warsaw in 1980s Poland, hoping to catch…
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Filmfest Hamburg celebrates 25 years
We were invited to attend Filmfest Hamburg’s bicentennial as guest of the “Come To Hamburg” initiative; a project set up to highlight the city’s hidden treasures through the writing of culture and travel bloggers from around the world. Normally, festivals are exclusive events, organised to create pre-release buzz or to market films lacking distribution deals.…
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Film Review: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
★★★★☆ Following In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, British director Martin McDonagh looks to be stamping his authority on awards season with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a blackly comic thriller about a mother seeking justice for her murdered daughter. Film titles can be lyrical, puzzling or purely literal. Three Billboards is the latter. Frances McDormand plays…
VENICE 2026
