Text at the beginning of Eric Ian Steele’s ’Forty-Two briefly lays out a familiar history of the Second World War: Germany’s repeated failure to invade and capture Britain, followed by its eventual defeat when America joined the conflict in alliance with Britain. It then boldly posts the question, “But what if it had all happened…
“I’m just a movie guy, I don’t know much about sports,” says old video store clerk Hank of the coming basketball game between local lovable losers the Warriors and LA’s all-star the Lakers, where the outcome seems a foregone conclusion (“we definitely cannot beat LA”). He then launches into a speech on the wish-fulfilment paradigms provided…
At the beginning of Jane Spencer’s South of Hope Street, Denise (Tanna Frederick) leaves her place of work, sits on a low wall with her colleagues outside, opens her well-thumbed copy of Sylvia Plath’s Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963 and underlines with a blue marker pen words that she has evidently written herself in capitals: “BLACK…
We Had It Coming opens with two programmatic sequences. In the first, Katja (Sofie Holland) is woken by the sound of a hardcore porn clip landing on her phone – a video in which, by implication, she features. She then, after grimly donning the transparent platform shoes that are part of her work costume, hangs…
Bacurau first published by VODzilla.co “Bacurau has always been here,” says old Plinio (Wilson Rabelo), puzzled at his town’s sudden disappearance from the satellite map on his smartphone and computer. “It should be right here. Bacurau has always been on the map.” In a sense, Bacurau’s absence is a metaphor. After all it is a…
Fish Story first published by EyeforFilm Tokyo, 2012. A comet is due to collide with Earth in five hours, with apocalyptic consequences for the human race. Everyone has fled the city for higher ground – all except for a bitter middle-aged man on a wheel chair, the younger owner of a record store, and his…
Le Havre first published by Film4 Synopsis: Polyhyphenate Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s latest deadpan treat offers a haven for old-fashioned French values. Review: “I used to live a Bohemian life in Paris,” aging, down-at-heel Marcel Marx (André Wilms) tells young Gabonese refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel). The entire œuvre of Aki Kaurismäki, Finland’s poker-faced champion of downbeat humanism and…