Reviews
The trailer does not lie. Why Don’t You Just Die! (Papa, sdokhni in the original Russian) is a camp melodrama awash with blood, gruesomeness, novel ways of hurting people and comic-book cruelty. It’s as if all the horrible things that ever happened to Wile E Coyote were bundled together and then brought to the screen … Read more
Robert Sigl was about 25 when he started making Laurin (aka Laurin: A Journey into Death), his remarkably atmospheric feature debut. It did well at the festivals when it came out in 1989, and Sigl picked up a rake of awards. More personal movies should have followed. But since the distinctive 1994 TV mini-series Stella … Read more
It’s L’arrivo di Wang in its original Italian, which still sounds bizarre, though perhaps slightly less fruity than it does in English, where the title suggests… the appearance of a Tarzanogram? The genre is sci-fi, so perhaps not, but if there’s one thing that this lo-fi offering has is plenty of intrigue. From the off we’re … Read more
A deeply ironic title, Welcome to Chechnya is a documentary about the treatment of homosexuals in the Chechen Republic, a largely Islamic part of the world which fought for its independence against Russia in two wars in the 1990s and is now embroiled in a culture war over LGBT rights. Chechnya is a country where … Read more
Welcome to sex. The Boy behind the Door is the sort of film that a Freudian shrink could go to town on, being all about two boys cusping puberty who are abducted and taken to a remote property where they have to fight for their lives to get free. “Friends to the end,” Bobby (Lonnie … Read more
Lovers Rock is the second in the sequence of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series of films for the BBC, stories from the frontline of the West Indian immigrant experience in the UK. Unlike its predecessor, Mangrove, which featured Letitia Wright, and Red, White and Blue, its successor, which starred John Boyega, Lovers Rock is not … Read more
Because Marcel Carné made Les Visiteurs du Soir in Nazi-occupied France, and because it’s about a realm invaded by the The Devil’s Envoys (the English title), it’s often seen as allegorical. Carné denied it to the end of his life. But his film works perfectly well as an allegory as long as you stop there … Read more
Happening (L’événement) really is a happening, a remarkable film about a subject that seems to demand a certain sort of treatment which goes out of its way not to deliver it. The subject is abortion in a country where it is illegal, France in the early 1960s, where we meet Anne, probably the prettiest of … Read more
1960’s Mill of the Stone Women was the first Italian horror film to be shot in colour – Technicolor, no less – and is a landmark film which opened the door to the lurid looks and titillating scenarios of the giallo genre. Also known as Drops of Blood (or Il mulino delle donne di pietra, in … Read more
It Be an Evil Moon does not declare itself immediately, but debut feature director Ben Etchells offers snacks to keep us going with a pre-credits sequence – a guy driving on a forest road at night finds something blocking the way. Gets out. Moves it. Gets back in the car. The audience at this point … Read more
The Power of the Dog makes it five films in nearly 30 years for Jane Campion, plus a TV series and a handful of shorts. She’s not exactly banging them out. And taken at the level of the individual film you’d never accuse Campion of being in a rush either. It’s Slow Cinema, almost, storytelling … Read more
Largely bonkers, 1947’s Secret Beyond the Door is a great film if what you need is a laugh, but a joke as what it’s meant to be – a twisted psychological film noir. It’s the last of five collaborations between Joan Bennett and director Fritz Lang, and it’s produced by Bennett’s husband, Walter Wanger, who … Read more