True Grit first published by EyeforFilm There is a strange sequence in the middle of Ethan and Joel Coen’s latest film, True Grit. Headstrong 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) and her hired lawman Deputy Marshall Reuben ‘Rooster’ Cogburn’ (Jeff Bridges) are riding through the Choctaw Nation in search of Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man…
According to legend, in 490 B.C.E. a messenger ran without stopping from Marathon to Athens to report as quickly as possible the improbable victory of the Athenian army against the overwhelming numbers of an invading Persian force, and dropped dead after giving the news to the Assembly. This 26-and-a-half-mile dash would become the model for…
Trust opens with an impressionistically glimpsed and artfully effaced couple having panting, passionate sex, while a series of increasingly urgent incoming text messages (“You OK?” “Call me back.” “Call me!”) is ignored. Next we see Brooke Gatwick (Victoria Justice) returning with a suitcase to her New York apartment, where she greets Owen Shore (Matthew –…
The Painted Bird first published by VODzilla.co Some way into Václav Marhoul’s The Painted Bird, the young Boy (Petr Kotlár) who is its main character watches the old birdcatcher Lekh (Lech Dyblik) applying paint to the wings of a captured bird, and releasing it into the air. The bird flies up to join its flock…
Violation first publsihed by Through The Trees, 13 September, 2020 Co-written and co-directed by Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Violation opens with the contrasting sounds of loons and baroque music, as a woozily abstract blurring of blues and greens slowly resolves itself into the image of a misty stone bridge over a woodland river. This…
Koko-di Koko-da first published by Little White Lies Three figures walk through the woods – giant Sampo (Morad Baloo Khatchadorian), raven-haired Cherry (Brandy Litmanen) and old, suited Mog (Peter Belli). They are accompanied by both a live dog and a dead one (Sampo carries the latter) – and Mog whistles and sings a song about…
Saint Maud first published by Little White Lies There is a paradox in Saint Maud, the first feature of writer/director Rose Glass. Although it constantly, closely tracks its central character Maud (Morfydd Clark), and restricts itself to her point of view right up until its very final image, the film is dominated by dialectics. Young…
There are two reasons behind the title of writer/director Adam Rehmeier’s mannered rites-of-passage comedy Dinner In America. The first is that the film is structured around a series of dinners, all bickering and fractious, that showcase the fault lines of class, sex and ideology in the neglected suburbia of the United States. The second is…
Jeremiasz Angust (Tomasz Kot) is a perfectionist. When we first meet this well-groomed, internationally acclaimed architect at the beginning of Kike Maíllo’s A Perfect Enemy, he is visiting Paris – a city that had for several years been his home – to give a Ted-style inspirational talk about his lifelong pursuit of architectural perfection, during…
They say you should write what you know, and so Tom Becker has drawn on his personal experience in Los Angeles’ comedy scene to script Too Late for his wife, director D.W. Thomas, in what is their feature debut after making the shorts Back from the Future (2017) and Hey, FiBi! (2018) together. In keeping…
Six Variations on the Woman in Trouble at FrightFest 2020 The Digital Edition of FrightFest ran from 27the-31st August Includes capsules of: Hall, The Columnist, Dark Stories, 12 Hour Shift, Blinders, The Swerve In 2020, Covid-19 has driven the August FrightFest underground and online, in a streamlined edition – also a mixed bag – of…