Note: unusually for the site this review contains mild spoilers – words failed me else – so read on with caution. On first consideration, Julia Ducournau’s new film, Titane (2021) is quite unlike Raw (2016), her last feature and, for most people, the most familiar point of comparison. To put it mildly, Titane is an […]
It’s been nearly fifteen years since Dans ma Peau (2004) was released, duly taking its place in the canon of New French Extremity, and garnering a great deal of justifiable praise for its transgressive nature and clarity of vision. These features alone – both the film’s age and its reputation – give us good enough […]
The opening scenes of Knife + Heart feel achingly familiar: how many films start with a woman in peril, running alone through the dark? Well, this is a film which doesn’t mind turning things on their head, even if the surprises are momentary. Anne (Vanessa Paradis) isn’t running from an assailant; she’s having a minor […]
Zombies, as anyone who’s been following the trends of horror cinema so far this century will be aware, came dangerously close to over-saturation in the past decade. (I’d say ‘done to death,’ only… y’know.) However, the mid-2000s living dead frenzy in the wake of Shaun of the Dead, The Walking Dead, World War Z etc. […]
I first encountered the cinema of Jean Rollin via the UK’s Redemption Films, whose founder, Nigel Wingrove, became good friends with Rollin over the years; the film company deserves far more awareness of the great service they did by bringing so many of these films into the common consciousness in the Nineties, making the films […]
DVD Review by Aaron Williams It’s an ugly term ‘torture porn,’ and it’s thrown around way too often in today’s cinematic climate. For those who pay their admission fees simply to catch sight of faceless victims being systematically disembowelled only to have narrative and characterisation fall to the wayside, it’s the mark of a hell […]
The Pack (La Meute) (2010) Distributor: Icon Home Entertainment DVD Release Date (UK): 4th July 2011 Directed by: Franck Richard Starring: Yolande Moreau, Émilie Dequenne, Benjamin Biolay, Philippe Nahon Review by: Ben Bussey It began like any other day on a bleak/remote/desolate country road in deepest darkest France. A moody emo girl burned down the […]