Director/co-writer/editor/cinematographer/producer Pierre Tsigaridis’ feature debut is not only, as its title baldly states, a tale of two witches, but also of two halves, formally separated into two numbered and headed sections, ‘The Boogeywoman’ and ‘Masha’, plus a prologue and epilogue. In Chapter I, 27-year-old, six-months-pregnant Sarah Johnson (Belle Adams), already uncertain about her relationship with…
Little Alexia (Adèle Guige) is in the back seat of a moving car, making vroom vroom engine sounds as though she were one with the vehicle. To counter this noise, her father (Bertrand Bonello) keeps turning up the music on the radio – so Alexia, still wanting her father’s attention, starts rhythmically kicking the back…
Sleepaway Camp (aka Nightmare Vacation) first published (in a slightly different verion) by Movie Gazette After a father and one of his young children are killed in a freak boating accident, the surviving child is sent to live with kooky Aunt Martha (Desiree Gould). Cut to eight years later, and Angela (Felissa Rose) is growing…
Gender Divide in Diptych: Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke of Burgundy first published (in a shorter version) in July 2019 by Senses of Cinema, and also in the book Strickland (2019, Queensland Film Festival) The Berberian Sound Studio – a labyrinthine post-production complex in 1970s Italy to which all the events of Berberian Sound Studio are restricted…
The gender(s) of genre in Cattet & Forzani’s ambisexual cinema first published by Senses of Cinema The strange cinematic experiments of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani grow over the graves of departed genres. Their shorts and their first two features are loving pastiches of giallo, that lurid Italian detective mystery genre which peaked in the…
Kolobos first published by Little White Lies, as the 77th instalment in my Cinema Psychotronicum column “The other day I came into her room and she was repeating a word over and over in her sleep. Kolobos.” “Kolobos? What does it mean?” “I have no idea.” “Six years of med school, all I really needed…
“Bullshit!” says Martha (Laura Fraser) in Tales From The Lodge, “It’s not true.” She has just heard Paul (Dustin Demri-Burns) tell a slasher-like story to explain why he does not currently have his Mercedes – but the story is too irrational and too unresolved to command any credibility. A quintet of old university friends –…
68 Kill first published by SciFiNow Adapted from Bryan Smith’s 2013 novel of the same name, Trent Haaga’s 68 Kill opens with the image of a fly trapped in honey, followed by the sight of Chip (Matthew Gray Gubler) transfixed with adoration as he watches his girlfriend Liza (AnnaLynne McCord) sleeping by his side. The suggestion…
Witching and Bitching first published by VODzilla.co “His name’s José. José Fernández Costa. He’s divorced. He wants joint custody, but Mum refused, because she says he’s irresponsible.” This is how 10-year-old Sergio (Gabriel Delgado) introduces his father (Hugo Silva) to the other men in the taxi – driver Manuel (Jaime Ordóñez), partner-in-crime Tony (Mario Casas), and…