Although the chronology of Til Death Us Do Part is not quite as straightforward as it first seems, the film begins with two sequences of apparent marital bliss in the present that also offer glimpses of the future. In the first, as the Best Man (Cam Gigandet, in hilarious form), seated in a pew, struggles…
Lady Street Fighter first published by Little White Lies, as entry 145 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column After graduating from UCLA Film School in the late Sixties, director James Bryan launched his career at indie cinema’s lowest end – a strange, psychotronic zone where exploitation reigns, sleaze flows and cult emerges – his trajectory and…
Chilean writer/director Patricio Valladares first rose to notoriety with Hidden in the Woods (2012), a shocking, disorientingly funny compendium of grindhouse gestures and motifs claiming (hilariously) to be based on real events. Yet before he made this – let alone before he remade it in English – Valladares already had four low-budget features (and a…
The Courier first published (in a shorter version) in Sight & Sound, January 2020 Review: “No names,” says the woman (Olga Kurylenko) who has come to a building to deliver a package, “I’m just the courier.” If this were a Ken Loach film (like, say, Sorry We Missed You, 2019), the anonymity of the courier…
The Villainess first published by SciFiNow “So melodramatic,” says trained killer Kim-sun (Jo Eun-ji) as two of her colleagues, Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin) and Min-joo (Son Min-ji), spend a little too long on their farewells to each other. It is a familiar criticism levelled by western viewers at the sentimental sensibilities so often found in Korean cinema…
John Wick: Chapter 2 first published by RealCrime Magazine If we have learnt anything from the likes of Sexy Beast, Jason Bourne, Red, and the sequels to The Fast and the Furious or The Mechanic, it is that in the artificial world of genre, there is no such thing as a reliable retirement plan. At the…
First published by Real Crime Magazine Ariel Kleiman’s feature debut Partisan begins with a woman and child passing a man on the side of the road. The man is Gregori (Vincent Cassel), out scavenging for wood, and in the next scene shown using the gathered lumber to fashion a table. Shouldering heavy beams and engaging…