There has been a minor run of punk and metal documentary-making in recent years: some of these do a fine job of simply retelling an interesting band history, and some go a step further, telling us more about what it means to be in a certain band or to have lived through a certain time […]
Before The Blood of the Dinosaurs gets properly started, we see a few seconds of footage where director and writer Joe Badon is chatting to one of the film’s stars, Kali Russell. So, what’s your movie about?’ she laughingly asks, before Badon turns the question back on her: ‘What do you think it’s about?’ In […]
With such a long pedigree of films which have explored altered states in impressively oddball ways, it presumably gets tougher and tougher for filmmakers to distinguish their own impressively oddball films from the rest. Well, a title like ‘All Jacked Up and Full of Worms‘ is certainly a good start. The film itself goes further […]
There’s a small, but noteworthy number of films in which actors appear as themselves – that is, as actors reflecting in some way on the fact that they’re actors. It’s a risky thing in some ways: ego has to be balanced against just enough self-deprecation to make it all hang together, else it could all […]
Good Madam (2021) is a very quiet film. There are no explosive moments; the vast majority of the story unfolds in a limited domestic space; there is a tiny cast. Opting for a restricted setting and a limited number of characters like this either speaks to a filmmaker’s make-a-film-any-film bravado, or genuine confidence that this […]
Fantasia International Film Festival usually winds up giving me a large share of my films of the year: it’s second to none in sourcing and selecting a frankly daunting array of fantastic new features. Now about to launch its 26th edition, and after bearing up under a couple of years of Covid restrictions, it will […]
Nitram (2022) is an immensely uncomfortable film. Even with no idea of the real-life events on which it is based, you can still sense a disaster in the offing, right from the opening credits; we are privy to a close character study of someone lacking in the most basic signifiers of humanity. If you do […]
In dystopian worlds, there’s a fascination with the possibility of closed environments. These small bastions of normality in the face of threats from beyond appeal to us, the more so when it ever becomes clear that – where humanity is concerned – nothing can ever be truly hermetically sealed: against hostile outsiders, environmental catastrophe, or […]
In recent years, no doubt as a result of changing social attitudes and debates, there’s been a steadily-increasing number of films which – subtly or less subtly – interrogate the relationships between men and women. This is their specific modus operandi, rather than incidental to the story. Men (2022) makes no secret of its modus […]
The (alleged) relationship between heavy metal and pure, unadulterated evil has given rise to some great horror movies down through the decades, and the best of these have been able to marry a sense of humour with their often fairly grisly content. When it comes to this humour, it’s also important that the film laughs […]
Is it too soon to talk about go-to themes and styles where director Robert Eggers is concerned? He has, after all, only made three features to date; who knows, he could head somewhere very different next time he works. A comedy musical perhaps. But, let’s indulge ourselves here and look at what he does seem […]