Hold onto your seat because this is the film you’ve all been waiting for, a movie about an English DJ in Spain who falls for his manic pixie dream girl. She dies, so he takes an experimental drug to allow him to have lucid dreams where he can be with her. It’s an after-life rom-com.…
What a rollercoaster! The Luckiest Man in America is about a guy who goes on a morning game show and becomes the record-breaking biggest winner in the show’s history. Going into the film, I was like, sounds interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s enough drama for a full movie. Oh, it’s plenty of drama,…
This film starts with the burning of a barn and ends with the burning of a world. This is being billed as a folk horror and it’s not. It’s a kitchen sink drama. At the end of harvest, a fire burns down the barn of the benevolent landowner. Master Kent, played by Harry Melling, has…
Absolute bollocks. If you like Alice in Wonderland, you might like this. It’s not for me. To the extent that anything is actually happening in this film, it’s about a stage magician who checks into a hotel only for the exit to disappear, leaving him trapped in a labyrinth filled with a cast of characters.…
Okay, some ground rules for going into this movie. It is about a U.S. veteran, so it is set firmly in the American unquestioned, unchallenged veneration of the military. So no asking obvious questions beyond the frame in which this story is told. Once you accept those ground rules, this is actually a solidly good…
This is a horror movie. Long Day’s Journey Into Night is based on the Eugene O’Neill play, and it very much feels like a filmed play, with everything taking place in one location, the family home, over the course of a day. The film begins cheerily enough, with a mother, father and their two sons…
Pather Panchali is the story of a brother and sister growing up in rural Bengal in the 1950s. This is a lovely film, really evocative of place, with the warmth of family and childhood at its heart. I love how this film depicts childhood. It’s very hard to depict the innocence of childhood while showing…
This is just a bad day for everyone across the board. Tornado is set almost entirely over one day in which things go wrong very fast, then just keep getting worse. At one point a character slips, goes down and breaks their arm, and instead of it seeming contrived, you just think, “Yup. It’s that…
Tonight GFF25 starts! Are you ready? I know I’ve been quiet all year, but that’s what happens when you are broke and disabled as fuck. Now I am up and raring to go for GFF25. Gonna stick with last year’s spoon management strategy, that worked well. Buzzed for the Opening Gala film!
So, that was GFF24. How was it for you? I know I saw 15 movies instead of my usual 40+ but I stayed much more in my energy levels and I think I saw the ones I was most excited about. Best of the festival for me was definitely the Gestures of Memory: After the…