Crooks world première at Tribeca, 7 June 2026 As Faye (Angela Trimbur), on stage in a spangly dress, sings Dream A Little Dream of Me, a man (Sanjay Choudrey) crudely heckles her from his table on the night club’s floor, suggesting that she should start stripping, and asking: “What decade does she even think it…
Invader had its international première at FrightFest 2024, 25 August Invader begins with text stating starkly that, according the the FBI, “a break-in occurs every 30 seconds in the US” – and it is accompanied by shots of a vandal (Joe Swanberg) systematically if messily destroying a house’s interiors with his feet, a blade and…
OffSeason first published by Movies On Weekends Aside from an attention-grabbing prologue and the occasional flashback, OffSeason is set entirely on the coastal island of Lone Palm just as the last summer tourists leave. The key word here is ‘off’ – for although this is a pleasure resort whose blue-skied beaches are for half the…
First published by Little White Lies If the title of V/H/S evokes a video format prevalent in the 1980s, then its extraneous ‘slashes’ point in two opposite directions, suggesting both the horror subgenre most closely associated with the Reagan era, and the conventional punctuation of a URL. The film itself, an anthology of short pieces…
Thou Wast Mild And Lovely first published by Grolsch FilmWorks “There’s just something about the way you carry yourself, about the way you walk. You carry a lot of tension in your shoulders. Like you got a secret you don’t want anyone to know. Or maybe you’re gay.” The speaker is Jeremiah (Robert Longstreet), the sly,…
A Preview To FrightFest Glasgow 2014 first published by Grolsch FilmWorks Includes capsules of: The Sacrament, Proxy, Almost Human, Savaged, Torment, The Scribbler While FrightFest started out in 2000 (and continues) as a long August weekend of horror and fantasy off Leicester Square, it has long since spread its wicked wings to a regular Halloween all-nighter (now in multiple UK…
First published by EyeforFilm Alongside Andrew Bujalski, Mark and Jay Duplass, Lynn Shelton, Aaron Katz and Ry Russo-Young, Joe Swanberg has been one of the key directors in the post-millennial independent film movement known loosely as ‘mumblecore’, characterised by low budgets, naturalistic dialogue and a probing honesty about relationships. He is also a fine actor…