If you have come to Projected Figures expecting accountancy, you are in the right place. Accountancy is what film writers do: counting minutes, counting words, reducing all cinema’s abstract expressions to calibrations, evaluations and calculated formulae on a simplified, and simplifying, worksheet. Critics, you see, operate a kind of reverse-alchemy, transforming vibrant sights and sounds into bland verbiage and, if you’re…
David Giancola was just 19 when he wrote and directed his first feature, the cult sci-fi Time Chasers, in 1994. This would be the first of many films that he would make for his production company Edgewood Studios, all meeting low budgets with high ambitions. His latest, Axcellerator, is typical. As pizza delivery boy Dane (Ryan…
In a future Los Angeles, a pervasive complex of interconnected, semi-intelligent nanobots, both in the air and under our skin, keeps everyone permanently online (or ‘on-Tangle’) and under surveillance, modifying our perception of ourselves and the world around us and preventing any acts of violence. A small group of people – mostly geek designers –…
Marc Carreté’s feature debut Asmodexia (2014) utterly inverted the established conventions of possession horror, so viewers ‘in the know’ will approach his follow-up After The Lethargy fully primed to expect the unexpected. This time around Carreté is tackling the tropes of alien conspiracy, as journalist Sara Hamilton (Andrea Guasch) is drawn to deep forestland –…
November first published by SciFiNow If, after The Witch (2014), a rural period film features backward values, supernatural motifs and goats, it comes with the expectation of a certain dark grimness – but you can leave your preconceptions at the barn door while watching Rainer Sarnet’s November, based on Andrus Kivirähk’s novel Rehepapp ehk November…
Freehold (aka Two Pigeons) first published by SciFiNow “Who else lives here?”, Mel (Mandeep Dillon) asks her boyfriend Hussein (Mim Sheikh) sarcastically, as he keeps insisting that he is not responsible for things happening in the apartment where they have started living together. Dominic Bridges’ feature debut Freehold, which he co-wrote with Rae Brunton (of…
F.U.B.A.R. (aka Killer Weekend) first published by SciFiNow “What a bloody hoo-ha. Makes a lot of sense if you’ve got none. Here’s a giggle, just a little bit of fun.” The lyrics to the song (by Sacha Puttnam and Gian Morrocco) that closes F.U.B.A.R. (aka Killer Weekend) lay out the film’s aims and intentions. Director/co-writer Ben Kent’s feature debut…
“We fascists are ordinary people too,” insists Rogelio (Karra Elejalde, TimeCrimes, 2007) near the beginning of Ana Murugarren’s The Bastards’ Fig Tree (La higuera de los bastardos). At this early stage of the film, viewers may find it difficult to sympathise with such a claim. After all, Rogelio’s fascist friends, though certainly once ‘ordinary people’,…
Our House first published by SciFiNow “I came here to have a serious discussion with you, not to be psychoanalysed,” complains Ethan Lightman (Thomas Mann) to his semi-estranged girlfriend Hannah (Nicola Peltz), about halfway through Anthony Scott Burns’ Our House. The line marks an important transition. For up until this point, Our House has followed young…
The Night Sitter first published by SciFiNow The Night Sitter opens with the sound of strange humming – and then we see young ‘Amber’ (Elyse Dufour) driving to a house in a suburban cul de sac for a child-minding job. As Amber carefully discards her cigarette, applies drops to her eyes, and practises introducing herself by…
Seeds first published by SciFiNow Wading on a shoreline in shallow sea water, young Lily (Uatchet Jin Juch) plucks out a large conch shell into which tentacles, initially protruding, withdraw into hiding. This scene, both primal and liminal, opens Owen Long’s Seeds, and recurs in dreamy flashback at several key moments during the course of the…
Perfect Skin first published by SciFiNow Anyone who has seen Rob Zombie’s 31 (2016) will know that the very best thing about it was actor Richard Brake. As ‘Doom-Head’, an incarnation of violent, painful death, Brake’s intense, haunted eyes, gaunt, cavernous cheeks and drawn, craggy skin were an integral part of his authenticity as a performer….