A film which starts out a Kafkaesque drama about an early coloniser of South America trying to get sent back home to Spain, and then descends into the Heart of Darkness, searching for a mythical Kurtz figure called Vicuna Porto. The sound and visuals in this film are great, really giving off a sweat and…
A documentary about the refugee crisis and its media coverage. Really difficult in places, had me in tears, watching people desperately trying to throw their children across police lines, lifting them up and on to trains, trying in any way to save them. This is juxtaposed with the omnipresent media contingent, who maintain an invisibility…
A movie about a Chilean woman whose partner dies suddenly and who is forbidden from his funeral because his first family are a bunch of transphobic cunts. This movie is visually beautiful and the music is great. One thing I liked is that Marina is full of a quiet inner strength. She is neither a…
A beautiful, vibrant, colourful documentary on the armed conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I didn’t realise this, but a lot of these rebellions are just a grift for soldiers to raise their wages. If you’re sick of shit at your work, you go, “I want a raise or I’m leaving”. In the army,…
A gorgeous western set in Indonesia. Seven bandits arrive at the house of a widow with the intention to rob and rape her. They end up dead and she remains. It is an excellent turn of the damsel-in-distress trope on its head. Yet in many ways this is a film which glories in the tradition…
A movie about youth homelessness. The film really begins when the main character, now without parents or a home, steals a racehorse called Lean On Pete that’s been marked for slaughter, and together they go on a journey to find his estranged aunt. The lead actor is convincing as this quiet, tall, skinny, silent kid…
Just out of Beast, which I really loved. Its the story of a woman who escapes her domineering family when she meets and falls in love with a man several rungs below her on the social ladder. So far so good, until he becomes the prime suspect in a series of child murders. What I…
A biopic of Billy Moore, the British boxer who was incarcerated in Thailand and went on to become the first foreigner to fight in the national prison kickboxing tournament. I do kinda feel this movie falls into the category of It Shouldn’t Happen To White People films. These are movies where you take events which…
A movie about a woman struggling to cope after losing her friend to suicide. This film is positively seething with grief. It’s raw and brutal. It also manages to be blackly comic in a very Scottish way. I really liked it. There are bits I was a bit hm on. At one point I did…
“Trust me when I say this is not a white saviour story. This is a white nightmare story.” I’m gonna hear about nothing but white people for 2 hours, aren’t I? Yes. Yes you are. Correct. Did You Wonder Who Fired The Gun? is an achingly obvious self-indulgent documentary whose alternate title may have been…