True Romance

True Romance (1993)

True Romance first published by Little White Lies, as entry 131 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column Every romance has its meet-cute. In the case of Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) and Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette), the meet-cute takes place in a Detroit movie theatre, announcing to the viewer (also originally in a theatre) that Tony Scott‘s…

Crisis

Crisis (2021)

After text promising a film “inspired by true events”, Crisis opens with a young man – a boy, really – hiking in the snow near the Canadian border, when he is surrounded, chased and apprehended by an overwhelming cordon of police. Cedric Beauville (Charles Champagne) was transporting bagfuls of green pills – fentanyl, an opioid…

Courier

The Courier (2019)

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…

Backwoods

The Backwoods (Bosque de Sombras) (2006)

The Backwoods (Bosque de Sombras) first published by EyeforFilm “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” says Norman (Paddy Considine) to his wife Lucy (Virginie Ledoyen). What he means is that they are in an isolated part of Northern Spain, with neither one of them equipped physically, culturally or, indeed, linguistically to cope with the sticky predicament…