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…
The Weird and Wonderful World of Ujicha: Violence Voyager / Burning Buddha Man first published by Sight & Sound March 2021 “Anything is possible in this world,” young Beniko hears at the beginning of Ujicha’s debut feature Burning Buddha Man (2013) – and, as if to confirm this, the speaker is a deer’s head mounted…
Bad Times At The El Royale first published by Sight & Sound, December 2018 Review: Like his directorial debut Cabin in The Woods (2012), Drew Goddard’s second feature as writer/director, Bad Times at the El Royale, also concerns a structure with hidden rooms, secret surveillance and the heady clash of stories/storeys – but its chief…
The Vault first published by Sight & Sound, October 2017 Review: The Vault opens with the sound of a distorted male voice reporting a robbery in progress and a hostage situation. The credits then play over a beautifully edited montage of overlapping images: headlines about the Centurion Trust Bank siege, blueprints (2D and 3D) of the…
Tramontane first published by Sight & Sound, October 2017 Review: “Send me an answer… and relieve me. Even if you wish to accuse me, don’t spare me. Send me an answer.” In the opening scene of Tramontane, a 24-year-old musician (Barakat Jabbar) sings this traditional song – whose lyrics are a plea for truth, however painful –…
Review first published by Sight & Sound, January 2016 Synopsis: Deer Field County, California, present day. After a janitor accidentally unleashes a zombie from a laboratory, teen boy scouts Ben, Carter and Augie set aside their differences and join forces with older stripclub cocktail waitress Denise. Under constant attack from undead townsfolk, they find out…
Beasts of No Nation first published by Sight & Sound, December 2015 Review: [contains spoilers] We hear children chanting a childish song, and see them playing in a dusty field, their game framed through a screenless television set. “It is starting like this,” says the voice-over of young Agu (extraordinary newcomer Abraham Attah), who, with the…
Final girls revisited, maternity messed up, madness mediated, misogynies exploded, confinement framed and social realism genre-fied: Virginie Sélavy, Kim Newman and I face the horror and cast pod on FrightFest 2015 here for Sight & Sound.
First published by Sight & Sound East End Film Festival, 1-12 July 2015 | venues around East London, UK Includes capsule reviews of: Estate: A Reverie; Containment; Astraea; Welcome to Leith; Ivy; Noah’s Ark; Above and Below; The Visit; Disaster Playground; Crumbs Climate change is fast approaching – may even already have passed – the tipping point where life as we know it…
First published by Sight & Sound Sci-Fi-London 15: 29 May – 5 June, 2015 Science fiction has of late been achieving stratospheric levels of attention. This year’s most lucrative tentpole titles look set to be Mad Max: Fury Road and its reemergent wastelands, a new entry in the Star Wars cycle and a seemingly endless phase of collaborative or…
Daybreakers first published by Sight & Sound, March 2010 Review: Emerging in 2003 – after 28 Days Later… (2002) but before Shaun of the Dead and the Dawn of the Dead remake (both 2004) – Michael and Peter Spierig’s self-funded feature debut Undead (2003) was at the forefront of the Noughties’ cinematic zombie revival, and had enough energy,…