Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet) at the BFI London Film Festival 2023 Some 35 years ago, Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismäki made the so-called underdog (or workers’) trilogy. Though otherwise unrelated to each other, his Shadows In Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988) and The Match Factory Girl (1990) all featured downtrodden protagonists struggling to find solidarity, love or revenge…
Strawberry Mansion first published by SciFiNow As he stays in the home of elderly, eccentric ‘atmosphere creator’ Bella (Penny Fuller) to audit her dreams, Preble (Kentucker Audley) finds himself sharing a room with Bella’s pet Sugar Baby. This tiny tortoise spends most of his time in a pink-lit terrarium, eating strawberries. If the terrarium is…
Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (Seperti dendam, rundi harus dibayar tuntas) first published by Little White Lies “Only a man who can’t get it up can face death without fear.” This line comes from near the beginning of Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, just after we have seen the film’s young…
“I want inside your little world,” Dan (Vincent Stalba) tells Sandy (Maddie Nichols), turning up on her doorstep – with a bunch of red roses and romantic intentions – at the beginning of Sam Fox’s Fck’n Nuts. Dan loves Sandy so much that he wants to see her at home and finally to ‘meet the…
All The Old Knives first published by Sight and Sound, June 2022 Review: Janus Metz’s All The Old Knives takes its title from the 2015 novel by Olen Steinhauer (who also wrote the screenplay) – and if that word ‘old’ promises a throwback to the past, it is referring not just to the reinvestigation of an…
Molli and Max in the Future had its world première at SXSW 2023 Two strangers get to know one another on a journey to the Big City, and then intermittently reencounter one another over the course of twelve long years during which the circumstances of their separate lives evolve with the times even as their…
Director’s Intention, transcript of introduction to a screening at the London Korean Film Festival 2022 “Your name goes on top of the ending credit, but it doesn’t mean it’s all yours. All the others care about the movie as much as you do.” This is what, some way into Kim Min-geun’s feature Director’s Intention, the…
House of Darkness had its UK première at Grimmfest Although, back in 1997, writer/director Neil LaBute’s provocative feature debut In The Company of Men made him an instant enfant terrible of the indie/arthouse circuit, it was also a horror film hiding in plain sight. For even if it did not come with any of the…
In Graham Baker’s Impulse (1984), toxic waste leaks into a rural town’s milk supply, causing the residents to lose all their inhibitions and to pursue their most violent or sexually taboo urges without censorship. Where Baker’s film was an apocalyptic sci-fi thriller, Love In Kilnerry tells a similar story in an entirely different genre. For…
Trust opens with an impressionistically glimpsed and artfully effaced couple having panting, passionate sex, while a series of increasingly urgent incoming text messages (“You OK?” “Call me back.” “Call me!”) is ignored. Next we see Brooke Gatwick (Victoria Justice) returning with a suitcase to her New York apartment, where she greets Owen Shore (Matthew –…
Love Exposure (Ai No Mukidashi) first published by Film4 Summary: Sion Sono’s Berlinale-winner is a Bible-length blend of the pious and the perverse that puts the rites back into teen rites of passage. Review: “Even a pervert has a life history,” declares epicene 17-year-old Yu Honda (Takahiro Nishijima) to fellow pupil – and girl of his dreams…