By Nia Edwards-Behi Readers, you may have been misled. When the first images and trailers for gore-meister Yoshihiro Nishimura’s latest film emerged it seemed like he might have gone a bit (only a bit, mind) more serious than his usual fare. Not so! The Ninja War of Torakage is as silly as you might expect […]
By Nia Edwards-Behi The fact that the National Theatre and Danny Boyle’s stage version of Frankenstein still gets milked in cinemas, in its NT Live broadcast form, every Halloween, is something of a testament to the general public’s desire to see new versions of a classic and frequently adapted story. Bernard Rose, of Candyman fame, […]
Review by Nia Edwards-Behi Kylie Bucknall (Morgana O’Reilly) is not having a good time. Arrested following a botched smash-and-grab, the surly young woman is sentenced to a lengthy period of house arrest, forcing her to return to her family home with her over-bearing but well-meaning mother, Miriam (Rima Te Wiata) and quiet step-dad Graeme (Ross […]
Review by Ben Bussey A young woman stands in front of a mirror in her underwear. Anyone in their right mind would agree she looks beautiful, and yet as she runs her eyes up and down her body her insecurity is written all over her face; seeing nothing but flaws, she is deeply uncomfortable, and […]
By Keri O’Shea A couple of years ago, I saw the first horror feature penned and directed by Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson. This film was Resolution – a film which easily made it into my favourite films of that year, though to tell the truth, I lost touch with what the directors had been […]
Review by Nia Edwards-Behi Astron-6 are modern genre filmmaking’s renaissance men, writing, directing, editing, SFXing and scoring their immensely popular short films and their first two features, Manborg and Father’s Day. All their films demonstrate a love for the golden era of the VHS, as much children of the early 1990s as the 1980s, which […]
Review by Ben Bussey Stuart Simpson would appear to be a filmmaker for whom “start as you mean to go on” was never the maxim. After breaking through internationally with 2010’s gleefully trashy neo-grindhouse movie Monstro! (AKA El Monstro del Mar), the Australian indie director has taken a rather different path for his next movie […]
Review by Tristan Bishop In the pantheon of Great Horror Directors, David Cronenberg still reigns supreme. Even though he’s moved outside of the genre in the past 25 years or so, every film he’s made has been possessed of a dark, unsettling core. Even A Dangerous Method (2011), ostensibly a historical drama about the relationship […]
Review by Tristan Bishop Over the past decade Tetsuya Nakashima has emerged as one of the most interesting names in Japanese cinema. I first encountered the delightful, surreal comedy Kamikaze Girls (2004) and the devastating elegiac drama Memories Of Matsuko (2006) when they were screened on Film Four in the UK some years ago, and […]
Review by Tristan Bishop Young Detective Dee : Rise Of The Sea Dragon was one of the great surprises of Sitges for me – not just for the content of the film, but that I had no idea it existed at all until I spotted it in the brochure and probably got a little over-excited. […]
Review by Nia Edwards-Behi I’ve been eagerly awaiting the chance to see A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night for some time. A film dubbed an Iranian-vampire-western, directed by a woman, seems quite tailor-made to my tastes. Shot in stark black and white, the film is set in the fictional Iranian town of Bad City, […]