There’s nothing more galling in life than a dwindling promise, and sadly, that is a real problem for Pandemonium (2023). What begins as a rather beautiful, stark and savage riff on what happens to us after we die disintegrates into a mess of clumsily-stitched parts, united for the most part only by two ideas: death […]
There are a couple of mysterious proverbs – at least they seem to be proverbs – at the beginning of All You Need is Death. ‘Love is a knife with a blade for a handle’; ‘Love goes in at the eye’. Taken together with the version of a certain Beatles track used for the title, […]
In a dusty pub, an evidently already troubled man (Peter Mullan) is disturbed by the arrival of a stranger, who enigmatically requests an audience with ‘her’. A short conversation ensues and the younger man, Neil (Jeremy Irvine) is sent away, agitated, in evident grief. It seems that this situation, and even living in this place, […]
Getting a new job is a time to celebrate, right? Well, not always: you might be coming from a dark place, and going to a darker one. That’s the central idea behind short film The Queue, as we meet IT specialist Cole (Burt Bulos) just ahead of his first shift at a new company. Things […]
The Stoic Breeze may only be thirty or so minutes in length, but it is a film all about taking one’s time; by extension, it’s kinda all about time, and a person’s relationship with it, negotiated through the natural world. We start with a hand-held camera which very soon begins to feel like a character […]
Property (2022) is a film of mighty complexities and great heart, and as such, it outstrips a whole host of films which have tried and failed to sustain a similar balance. If some of its reasoning and momentum dissipate at certain points, then it’s never at the expense of the film’s involving, invoking, grim and […]
With a rather unwieldy title, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant) starts at – a little girl’s birthday party. The little girl, Sasha, surprises her close-knit family group with her innate ability to play the keyboard she’s given as a gift – something which they puzzle over while she plays. […]
How do you signal to your audience that things are going to head south pretty fast – other than by titling your film A Most Atrocious Thing, that is? Turns out it’s by showing us almost instantly a sign reading Danger! Contaminated Water! Then a deer drinking from this water, before cutting straight to some […]
A wounded hand disappears into nothingness as a modern, chain link fence divides us, at least initially, from an idyllic English churchyard; if Penda’s Fen (1973) can be seen as fairly recusant in its treatment of themes and narrative structure, then you could equally argue that it spells out its key themes, or at least […]
You’ve gotta love a film that straight away states its intent (and understand a film which needs to sell its merits pretty damn quickly) and Nightmare (1981) does both of these things. We’re off with a dream of a dismembered body, a shrieking nightmare, a man in a straightjacket – and the immediate need to […]
A sinister opening reel turns out to be something everyday – a car engine – in snappy supernatural short Ride Baby Ride (2023), showing us straightaway that all our woes are going to be vehicular – starting with the pair of geezers hoping to sell on the car in question, though treating themselves to a […]