The Woman King first published by Sight & Sound, November edition 2022 Review: There is a paradox in the kenning-like title of this latest feature from director Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Secret Life of Bees, 2008; Beyond the Lights, 2014; The Old Guard, 2020). A ‘woman king’ is surely a queen – but unlike Shantay (Jayme…
Smile first published by Sight and Sound Writer/director Parker Finn’s feature debut begins with a face in close-up, but not with the smile promised by the title. A woman (Dora Kiss) is lying prone and dead in her bed, and as the camera tilts and pans across the floor, we see a mess of spilt…
Bodies Bodies Bodies and spotlight on Rachel Sennott first published by Sight and Sound, Sept 2022 Review: In the slasher subgenre, it is the younger generation and their peculiar anxieties which tend to be put under the knife – for its main characters are typically high school pupils or university co-eds, cut off in their…
The Feast (Gwledd) first published by Sight & Sound, September 2022 Review: Over plain opening credits, birdsong and the bleating of sheep can be heard, sonically conjuring a rural idyll, before being interrupted first by the sound of a car arriving and then by the noise of a much louder motor. The source of that…
Earwig (2021) Earwig first published by Sight and Sound, Summer 2022, as was the appended sidebar on other films by Lucile Hadzihalilovic Synopsis: Europe, the mid-1950s. Albert Scellinc ensures that the icy false teeth of his young ward Mia are regularly replaced. This routine is unsettled by instructions to ready Mia for her new home,…
Dashcam first published by Sight & Sound, Summer Edition 2022 Review: Presenting only what the characters see on their devices as a séance conducted over Zoom goes wrong, Rob Savage‘s feature debut Host (2020), co-written with his regular collaborators Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd during the first Covid lockdown, was pure ‘screenlife’ horror. This is…
The Innocents (De uskyldige) first published by Sight and Sound, June 2022 Review: The Innocents begins with an act of casual, childish cruelty. Woken by the grunting of her older, profoundly autistic sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad) in the back of the family car, Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) pinches her sister’s leg hard – after checking that their parents…
Nocebo first published by Sight and Sound, Winter 2022-2023 Synopsis: The UK, today. Filipino maid Diana arrives on the doorstop of fashion designer Christine, offering to help cure a mysterious affliction plaguing her mind as much as her body. Coming with her own history of trauma, Diana slowly sets about confronting her new mistress with…
X first published by Sight and Sound online Ti West‘s X opens with a visual trick to confound the viewer’s sense of time. A corpse-strewn farmhouse is shown in what appears to be outmoded Academy ratio, until the camera’s forward movement reveals that the vertical extremities of this squared image are in fact the sides…
Amulet first published by Sight and Sound, March 2022 Review: As a soldier digs a latrine in the woods near his remote border post in an unnamed, war-torn Balkan country, he unearths a small statuette of a pagan mother goddess – the titular ‘amulet’. This prologue to actress Romola Garai’s feature debut as writer/director introduces…
A Banquet first published by Sight and Sound, April 2022 Review: A Banquet may begin with a scene of frenzied food preparation, and its very title may point to a formalised, indulgent meal, but in fact director Ruth Paxton’s film will concern itself with abstinence in extremis. Right from the opening scene, consumption is pathologised:…