Finnegan Oldfield

Infested

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Kaleb screams

Infested is Attack the Block with added spiders
 and that’s a good thing. A homage to John Carpenter, in other words. Confined space, conflicted characters, churning synths, an invisible foe
 until it suddenly isn’t, it’s (mostly) all here. It’s the feature debut of French director SĂ©bastien Vaniček and impressed Sam Raimi enough to get Vaniček a gig directing the next Evil Dead movie – a franchise back from the, er, dead. You can see why Raimi signed him up. Raimi-like, Vaniček wastes no time getting his story going, and then prioritises forward momentum. In disaster-movie style we meet a bunch of characters before following them into a situation full of jeopardy. Some will survive, … Read more

Corsage

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Elisabeth at a formal dinner

Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898), the focus of writer/director Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, isn’t that big a deal outside the Germanosphere. Inside it, though, it’s a different matter. A huge number of documentaries have been made about her in Germany and Austria, going all the way back to 1921. The interest remains fervent in the 21st century. So far this decade she’s made an appearance in no less than five Austrian/German dramatisations of her life – as well as Corsage, there’s the TV series Sisi; feature Elisabeth; another TV series, The Empress; and another feature, Sisi and I (whose release date got bumped when Corsage came along). What’s the fascination? Maybe it’s that she, … Read more