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FrightFest 2020: The Columnist review
★★★★☆ In Ivo van Aart’s timely psycho-thriller, The Columnist, a female cultural commentator subjected to an endless stream of misogynistic vitriol by online trolls decides to get her own back, showing these vile men their hateful words have consequences. Femke Boot (Katja Herbers) has earned the wrath of right-wingers who live to ‘own the libs’, all…
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FrightFest 2020: There’s No Such Thing as Vampires review
★★☆☆☆ Brought together at random by a car crash in the middle of the night, twentysomething Ariel (Emma Holzer) is thrown headfirst into a nightmare as she helps a mysterious man named Joshua (Josh Plasse) escape the attentions of a malevolent supernatural being. Logan Thomas’ There’s No Such Thing as Vampires is a movie arguably too…
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Film Review: Hope Gap
★★☆☆☆ Veteran scribe William Nicholson returns to the screen in his first feature directorial credit since 1997’s Firelight. Now on directing duties too, Nicholson explores the perils and heartbreak of middle-aged divorce with Hope Gap. Nicholson has form with writing later-life relationships, so it’s a shame that the real hope gap here is that between…
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FrightFest 2020: Programme highlights
With Covid-19 still a global threat, festival organisers have been pushed to making crucial decisions: Cancel or opt for an online edition? While a few hardy festivals, such as Venice, have announced the show must go on, at least in some form, others have decided the online option is more viable and infinitely safer. FrightFest,…
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Film Review: She Dies Tomorrow
★★★★☆ In her second feature as director, American actor-producer-filmmaker Amy Seimetz explores the existential ennui of inevitable doom in this chilling, strange horror. In the age of Covid and climate change, what could possibly feel more contemporary? Having missed its premiere at the cancelled SXSW festival earlier this year, much has been made of She…
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Film Review: Tenet
★★☆☆☆ Christopher Nolan’s films are so big, so hotly anticipated, that they form their own sort of gravitational pull, and cinema chains are hoping that the draw of Tenet will irresistibly compel viewers back into theatres. For all of Tenet’s innovative, ideas-led structure, however, it lacks the sort of emotional core that elevates such films…
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Four facts you may not know about Casino
Every casino regular has probably seen Martin Scorsese’s 1995 classic Casino, starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone. However, only true fans of both casinos and cinema know the following facts about the movie and its production. Casino is based on a true story that took place in Las Vegas, the capital of…
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Film Review: Away
★★★★☆ Winner of the Contrechemp award at last year’s niche Annecy animated film festival, Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis’ feature debut is among the most innovative and enchanting animated films released this year. Away combines Zilbalodis’ signature minimalist style with the structure of a classic survival story. Compared with the vast conglomerate resources of the Disneys,…
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Film Review: Perfumes
★★★☆☆ Reminiscent of the 2011 crowd-pleaser Les Intouchables, Grégory Magne’s Perfumes is a charming, unconventional, odd-couple buddy movie of sorts, which crisscrosses an autumnal France with the highly cultured nose of sourpuss recluse, Anne (Emmanuelle Devos), in search of smelly solutions to her myriad clients’ needs. And though he may be driving, her down-on-his-luck, warm-hearted…
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Film Review: King of the Cruise
★★★★☆ Baron Ronald Reisinger lives a life of indulgence, flaunting his status and dining in style on an ocean liner. Yet he is curiously solitary. King of the Cruise, the latest film from Dutch documentarian Sophie Dros, is at once a singular portrait of defanged nobility and a complex, patient exploration of loneliness. Anyone who…
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