Writer/director Matthew Goodhue’s feature debut Woe begins with a series of unsettling sights and sounds. As a young bearded man (Adam Halferty) comes out of house’s backdoor carrying something in a large garbage bag which he embraces tenderly before putting it down, picking up a shovel and digging into the ground, we can hear the…
The Dark Red first published by VODzilla.co The Dark Red begins in Cherokee County, Georgia, with Child Support Officer Katherine Warren (Jill Jane Cements) visiting a trailer home where she discovers a mother lying deceased and beginning to decompose on the bed, and her three-year-old daughter Sybil hiding in a toy box. “You’re safe,” Katherine…
Jonathan (Baby Driver‘s Ansel Elgort), the protagonist of Duplicate (aka Jonathan), is a straight-laced, hard-working wannabe architect, held back from career success only by an idiosyncratic insistence upon leaving his firm early every day (supposedly to look after an ailing relative) and, after filming a video diary, going to bed – and straight to sleep –…
Don’t Go In The House first published by VODzilla.co Don’t Go In The House opens with a pair of fiery images. In the first, a hand is seen lighting a gas stove with a match. The second shows powerful combustion in an industrial incinerator. Donald ‘Donny’ Kohler (an intense, bewildered performance from Dan Grimaldi) stares, mesmerised,…
“So this is the basement. It’s for killing people or raping animals,” jokes Christian (Evan Dumouchel). “Why am I showing this to you?” Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews) has just arrived unexpectedly in New York, so Christian is giving his old schoolfriend a tour of the apartment, including the rooftop space and downstairs storeroom, which until recently Christian had shared…
Take Shelter first published by Film4 Synopsis: Jeff Nichols’ follow-up to Shotgun Stories dramatises the breakdown of a family man and the world around him. Review: “It’s hard to explain because it’s not just a dream. It’s a feeling. I’m afraid something might be coming. Something that’s not right.” 35-year-old Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) keeps having visions that…
The Voices first published by Sight & Sound, April 2015 Review: Franco-Persian filmmaker Marjane Satrapi is best known for the animated feature Persepolis (2007) and its stylised live-action follow-up Chicken With Plums (2011), both adapted from her own graphic novels, both co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud, and both dealing in their different ways with the experience of…
Review first published by FilmLand Empire “You keep thinking like that, these streets will eat you up. You’ve got to change your negativity. What I’m saying to you, dude: it’s the way you look at shit. I mean, change your perception, and you change the world.” The speaker is one of several ‘invisible’ homeless characters…
Enemy first published by FilmLand Empire “Chaos is order yet undeciphered” reads text near the beginning of Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy, proclaiming the film’s status as a thorny puzzle in need of careful decoding. Enemy may be adapted from José Saramago’s 2002 novel The Double, but it is equally haunted by the spirits of Hegel, Lynch…
Dementamania first published by Grolsch FilmWorks It is Friday the 13th, 2013, and something is bugging well-to-do white-collar drone Edward Arkham (Sam Robertson). After being stung by a nightmarish wasp in the morning, he heads into work, where he is rattled by all his co-workers. Volatile CEO Christian (Kal Penn) sends Edward mixed signals about his…
Julia first published by Grolsch FilmWorks “Like clockwork, Lady Snowblood,” says the Japanese bartender (Kumiko Konishi) to the quiet woman who has recently started frequenting her all-women’s drinking hole in New York’s Chinatown. “Born for revenge.” In a sense Julia Shames (Ashley C. Williams) – meek, shy, damaged – is nothing like Kaji Meiko’s vengeful…