Like so many before him, Mike Pinkney (played by, heh, Mike Pinkney) has taken the trip to Hollywood in pursuit of a filmmaking career – but the dream has since soured, and he now works as a trainee dog groomer, while using his spare time to shoot ‘weird video art’ alone in his apartment. At…
“It’s too dark, I can’t see,” says the unnamed (and unseen) investigator at the beginning of Murder Death Koreatown, filming from his Koreatown apartment as police lead someone off in the alley below. “It looks like a woman.” The investigator has just captured on camera the arrest of Mi-sun Yoo for stabbing to death her…
The Conspiracy first published by Grolsch FilmWorks Family man Jim (James Gilbert) and his friend Aaron (Aaron Poole) are making a documentary on conspiracy theorist Terrance (Alan C. Peterson), when Terrance suddenly vanishes without trace, leading Aaron down a rabbit hole of fanaticism and paranoia as he tries to pin down whatever nefarious plot Terrance…
Stuck first published by Film4 “Out of sight, out of mind.” So says Rashid (Russell Hornsby), the drug-dealing boyfriend of Brandi Boski (Mena Suvari), as the pair plots to get rid of Thomas Bardo (Stephen Rea) – a homeless man who has become lodged in the windshield of Boski’s car after she accidentally rammed him…
Le Cercle Rouge first published by Movie Gazette The French auteur Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-73) specialised in ‘policiers’, or crime films, tapping into a dark vein of pessimism which has always lain buried deep within classic American film noir, and refining it into an existentialist vision of the world and man’s place in it. Perhaps best…
Lady Vengeance (Chinjeolhan geumjassi) first published by EyeforFilm Vengeance always begets more vengeance. Park Chan-wook never intended that the bleak social commentary of Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002) and the Oedipal extravagance of OldBoy (2003) should be conceived as related projects, but after Korean journalists hounded him over his new-found obsession with violent revenge, he…
Secretary (2002) first published by Movie Gazette In the typical romantic comedy, a woman meets her ideal man, and after being separated from him by a range of comic trials, eventually marries him, with the prospect of happiness for ever after. So Steven Shainberg‘s directorial debut Secretary belongs to the same genre as, say, The…
The Gentlemen first published by Sight & Sound, March 2020 Review: Writer/director Guy Ritchie has often been criticised for the ‘mockney’ miscreants who inhabit his early features Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch (2000), Revolver (2005) and RocknRolla (2008) – a motley ensemble whose Britishness, Englishness, even Londonishness is a highly artificial construct,…
Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) first published by Film4 Summary: Comedy director Tomas Alfredson turns his hand to a quiet horror story of pre-teen angst and vampiric longing in Cold War Stockholm. Review: “Not too close, not too far. Keep distance.” The broken Swedish of gym teacher Mr Avila (Cayetano Ruiz)…
“Everyone is responsible,” says the male Voice of Authority over the tannoy at the very beginning of John Hsu’s Detention (Fanxiao), before adding “…for reporting espionage”, and further warning that failing to do so is a crime, that inciting rebellious thoughts will result in punishment, and that subverting the government is punishable by death –…
Gone (Poissa) opens with the interior of a corridor in a house at night (a child’s toy dog sitting in the foreground), followed by a rapidly accelerating montage of exteriors – all wide open landscapes in different seasons and geographical locations around the globe. This prologue involves a strong element of mystification, as there is,…