“Why don’t people learn from their mistakes?” An elderly woman speaks those words at the beginning of Palimpsest (2022), and it’s a question which shapes the film which follows as we unfold a gentle, sometimes whimsical and sometimes moving story all about the ‘What ifs?’ Back to the lady who opens proceedings: she’s busy pondering […]
I had a strange sense of deja-vu several times when watching Robert Morgan’s first feature-length film, and the first of these is because I can never remember who anyone is or what they’ve done. So, when I first glimpsed Morgan’s very distinctive stop-motion style during the opening moments of this feature, I realised that I […]
Review by Darren Gaskell Aimless Ryan (Richard Galloway) is struggling to find purpose in life. Having quit his teaching gig, he’s struggling to find gainful employment and his lack of drive is testing the patience of partner Louise (Louise O’Leary). Wandering around a local antiques emporium, Ryan picks up a somewhat overpriced hammer, but also […]
Review by Darren Gaskell 23rd March 2020. As the spectre of Covid loomed large over the UK and the population was told to isolate, filmmaker Damien Sung decided to film a series of vlogs documenting his experience as a divorced father of three living some distance away from his wife and kids. Soon the effects […]
Review by Darren Gaskell Security guard Ben (Adrian Linke) is working a night shift at a warehouse when three people, intent on getting their hands on the contents of the safe, break into the building. As Ben considers how to tackle the intruders, he also has to deal with the spectre of his recent past […]
The act of fossil-hunting is, for all its wholesomeness and its interesting history and fresh air, a hunt for a past which is by now utterly alien to us. It hangs somewhere between presence and absence; fossils are here, but gone; permanent, but extinct. And if all of this sounds like a rather lofty way […]
Good Boy (2022) is an odd proposition, because it immediately disrupts what you may expect from its most obvious plot elements. With its clean, sumptuous interiors, pleasant and polite cast, and distinctly bloodless approach to its storytelling, it oh-so almost keeps up appearances – but it has a grim, unsettling element which runs right to […]
Minore (2023) is a great premise on paper, but – sadly – too diffuse and poorly-paced to pass muster in practice. Along the way, there are great scenes and great ideas, but the film’s ragtag approach to building tension and developing a plotline let it down. It could have been a great film, shorn of […]
There has, in recent years, been a modest resurgence in interest in the genre of folk horror, with directors such as Ari Aster and Robert Eggers putting their own spin on recognisable folk horror features such as closed communities, local belief systems and irrational devotion to the edicts of these systems. As such, the likes […]
At this point, a good zombie film feels like a noble tradition for many horror fans but also, given the number and the scope of zombie horrors down through the years, it’s acceptable to be a little picky. Not only did the birth of zombie cinema kickstart a new, nasty, unrelenting kind of horror, but […]
By Gabby Foor and Keri O’Shea We are rounding off our coverage of Fantasia for this year with another block of short films; this time, the uniting factor is that all of these films were directed by a female director. There’s no one genre uniting these films per se, although there do seem to be […]