By Darren Gaskell Leaping on to the screen, Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) celebrates his successful applejack distillery in a cheerful musical number to lift the spirits, right up to the point at which a lack of vigilance due to imbibing too much product combined with some sneaky, tree-based vandalism ends with said distillery […]
Don’t be misled by the title ‘Unfriending’ – as I was at first – into thinking this film has anything much to do with the kind of ‘unfriending’ we associate with social media and the internet (and for which the term was coined). Whilst this film covers the kinds of attitudes to friendships which are […]
As the gap between science fact and science fiction narrows year on year, some of the best sci-fi simply takes recognisable elements from our day-to-day lives and gives them a tweak or two; that’s often enough to make us question the new normal in some way, and some great cinema has already appeared as a […]
The cinematic monsters made famous by Universal nearly a century ago continue to appear on our screens today, though often now imbued with much more modern symbolism; the vampire, Frankenstein’s creature (or versions of it) and of course the werewolf are used to represent current predilections, anxieties and fears. You could even say the werewolf […]
A crisis of belief besets a West African village in Mami Wata, as corruption and greed sweep in behind it. A dark, often cruel story unfolds, painting a devastating picture of the repercussions of change. The film does this without being overly simplistic, and it does it without any chiding, even if its message is […]
We get some on-screen preamble before the events of The Lair (2022) unfold before us. Locating the film in conflict-ridden Afghanistan in 2017, we’re told that a US bomb strike on a certain province, intended to destroy an insurgent stronghold, occurred after alleged ‘disturbing activity’ in the area. So there we have it: we’re going […]
By guest contributor Darren Gaskell Following an energy-sapping battle against an evil giant turtle, five superheroes known as the Tobacco Force are instructed by Didier, their chief, to head for a rural retreat in order to work on their cohesion as a team. Soon after they reach their swanky recovery pad, bickering and uncertainty among […]
With on-screen text which tells us that events in the film genuinely took place in Brisbane, Australia in 1997, Bliss of Evil avowedly sets itself up as something other than the more typical supernatural set-up we often get when music – particularly rock music – is concerned. And indeed, the opening scene is very grisly, […]
You know that bit at the start of There Will Be Blood (2007), where a silent, grizzled man is digging into the earth – eventually striking oil? Okay, good. Now, let’s shift things to WWII-era Finland; here’s another grizzled, silent prospector, wandering the landscape alone – only this guy is looking for gold, not oil, […]
Sight Extended (2023) starts out looking like a space-set sci-fi; it’s only when you look closer that you realise you’re looking at a much more familiar, convex shape – a lens, specially-adapted to allow a person to access all of their push notifications, calls, maps, you name it, with a mere, literal blink of an […]
Invoking Yell (2023) is clearly a film that likes to layer its influences, giving us a grab-bag of themes and styles. These chiefly being: found footage; 90s-style analogue cameras; the EVP phenomenon and the film’s biggest, boldest theme – 90s black metal. By way of some on-screen text at the start, the film explains that, […]