Bad Match first published by SciFiNow At the beginning of Bad Match, Harris (Jack Cutmore Scott) is in a bar, texting on his phone, when Rachel (Christine Donlon), his latest hook-up from a Tinder-like website called Head Over Heels, arrives for their first date. As part of his flirtatious schtick, Harris slickly pretends to read…
“Nice place to be homeless,” says Knox Bannett (Todd Grinnell), just after he has handed over a fiver to mendicant war veteran Rodney (Scott Anthony Leet) at the beginning of Martin Guigui’s Paradise Cove. The ‘nice place’ is Malibu, California, famed for its its extended coastal strip, its sun and its surf. Knox has arrived…
The Drone first published by SciFiNow Some would argue that the drone shot is killing cinema. It allows filmmakers to show hovering god’s-eye views without having to hire a budget-breaking crane or helicopter – but the wobbly distance that it offers gets tired with gratuitous overuse (especially in indie documentaries). In The Drone, however, these…
Chloe first published by Sight & Sound, March 2010 Review: Atom Egoyan is not only one of Canada’s most consistently engaging directors, but also a very talented writer, responsible for the screenplays (whether original or adapted) of all his features from Next of Kin (1984) through to Adoration (2008). So when the eponymous sex worker…
Ma first published by Little White Lies At the beginning of Ma, we see 16-year-old Maggie (Diana Silvers) driving with her mother Erica (Juliette Lewis), a U-Haul trailer attached to the rear of their car. They are moving from California back to Erica’s childhood town in the boonies of ‘bumfuck’ Ohio. This is a delicate…
Kindred Spirits has its world première on Sunday 16 June at Cinepocalypse 2019 The filmmaking careers of both Lucky McKee (May, 2002; The Woman, 2011) and Chris Sivertson (The Lost, 2006; I Know Who Killed Me, 2007) both began in 2001 when they co-directed and co-wrote the shot-on-video All Cheerleaders Die – which they remade…
The Cleaning Lady first published by SciFiNow In Carl Reiner’s noir mashup Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), the merest mention of the phrase ‘cleaning woman’ is enough to trigger an extreme post-traumatic response in private dick Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin), sending him into a violent rage. Who knows how old Rigby would have reacted to…
Nena Eskridge’s feature debut Stray opens with an idyll shattered. Shots of a peaceful pond, of countryside verdure, of sheep at pasture, and the sound of birds chirping, are disrupted as we see a young woman flee from the back of a van, screaming. This is Jennifer Davis (Gabrielle Stone), and as an older man…
The Gift first published by Sight & Sound, October 2015 Review: In the opening scene of The Gift, as Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) view a stylish house in the hills of Los Angeles, Simon peers in from the porch at his wife, their faces close but separated by a glass sliding door, and…
First published by Grolsch FilmWorks With Big Love all over our TV screens, The Book of Mormon winning critical acclaim and awards on stage, and in 2012 the first ever Mormon candidate running for the US Presidency, the Church of Latter Day Saints – the most mainstream of America’s homegrown religions – has recently risen to…