The very title of Scott Slone’s Astral Plane Drifter promises a strange merger of an oater like Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter (1973) and something altogether more psychonautic – perhaps a heady hybrid akin to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ‘spaghetti easterns’ El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). The film’s opening line – “We all enclose…
Cielo had its UK première at SXSW London, 6 June 2025 Cielo begins with a very striking image: eight-year-old Santa (extraordinary newcomer Fernanda Gutiérrez Aranda) looking tiny in wide shot as she sits, back to camera, before a lake, with the snowy peaks of the Andes framing the background. Here the cielo – Spanish for…
The Fall first published by musicOMH, in 2006 Back in the day when he was directing REM’s Losing My Religion video and making award-winning commercials, he was known by his full name Tarsem Singh. These days, though, like Madonna, Aaliyah and Lulu before him, he has abandoned his surname altogether – but even those who…
FAQ had its Canadian première at Fantasia 2024, 24 July “Why do I have to do this?”, asks Dong-choon (Park Na-eun). This diminutive 11-year-old introvert is clever, creative and curious, but frustrated by the lack of answers to her questions – until, that is, she herself starts finding answers in the bottom of a makgeolli…
Booger seen at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2023 Writer/director Mary Dauterman’s feature debut Booger opens with phone footage shot by Izzy Walker (Sofie Dobrushin) of a stray black cat making itself at home on the bed of her disgusted flatmate Anna (Grace Glowicki), who is not at all happy about this turn of events…
Patrick (De Patrick) first published by Little White Lies (in a shorter version online) “It’s all down to an uncertain void that has been created,” says Herman (Pierre Bokma) as he addresses the residents of a naturist campsite in a bid to take over now that the owner Rudy (Josse De Pauw) has died. Herman…
The title Finding Ophelia might suggest something along the lines of Al Pacino’s Looking For Richard (1996), in which the Academy/Tony-award-winning actor seeks the relevance and resonance of his latest Shakespearean rôle. Yet while Stephen Rutterford’s film is also a feature debut, and certainly evokes Shakespeare (among other things), Finding Ophelia is no documentary, but…
Starfish first published(in a slightly shorter version) by VODzilla.co Grief can be apocalyptic. When somebody close dies, the overwhelming sense of loss – and the concomitant denial, regret, guilt, dissociation, depression and anger – can be devastating. It is, of course, possible to survive, and to get through to the other side, but neither the…
Wonderstruck first published by Little White Lies “You really do live in a museum,” complains single mother Elaine (Michelle Williams) to her son Ben (Oakes Fegley), whose bedroom is festooned with the souvenirs, mementoes and detritus that he has curated over the 12 years of his life. Museums form key locations in Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck, which…
Annihilation first published by VODzilla.co Lena (Natalie Portman) is both a soldier and a scientist. This might, as the psychologist Dr Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) suggests, make Lena perfectly suited for the expedition that these two are undertaking with three other women: physicist Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson), geomorphologist Cassie Sheppard (Tuva Novotny) and paramedic Anya Thoronsen…
First published by EyeforFilm In a sense Alejandro Jodorowsky’s first three feature films – Fando y Lis (1968), El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973) – all tell essentially the same story: a man goes on a metaphysical quest for self-knowledge and divine enlightenment through an imperfect world of symbols, delusions and perversions. Yet despite their shared DNA, each…