The vistas in this are stunning. You forget just how vast China is, seeing a big ole country on a map doesn’t properly convey that this stretches from mountains to rainforest to desert. One Second is set on an immense desert steppe, and the panoramas are just spectacular. Set in the 60s under Mao’s rule,…
Ruth Wilson stars as Kate, a middle-aged single woman suffocating in her rundown seaside town and her tedious as fuck office job. She works for the brew, where she meets Blonde, recently released from jail and looking to sign on. An affair with him looks sure to blow the dust off her life. Firstly, obviously,…
Just a fucking excellent film. Her Way is a film about a mother trying to do the best for her son. Marie is a single mother, raising her son Adrien alone. He is 17 and going through a difficult time. He is sullen, lazy, stoned and feckless. Marie is at her wit’s end trying to…
A Banquet is a horror film in the vein of mental illness or possession? Focusing on a family of a mother and her daughters, anorexia is transformed into preparation for sainthood or the affliction of the demon-possessed. Dunno what it is but I feel like recently I’ve just seen a bunch of stuff that was…
There is always a sensitivity when films are made about true life crimes. You don’t want to aggrandise the killer nor exploit the acts gratuitously. Yet it is also undeniably true that people are fascinated by destructive events and the motives for unusual crimes. Can you present that in a way that walks that fine…
Once Upon A Time In Uganda is a documentary about Wakaliwood, where Isaac Nabwana makes low-budget, high-octane action flicks. Isaac is based in Wakaliga, a ghetto in the capital city of Uganda, Kampala. There he makes movies for as little as £200, and puts them out to his neighbours. When Alan, a superfan from America…
A simple and straightforward story. Guled is a gravedigger, his wife Nasra needs an operation to remove her kidney or she’ll die, he tries to raise the money for the operation. Beautifully shot, eschewing artifice for directness. Other people might have made this film as a tragic story, about poverty and preventable illness in the…
What’s that in my eye? Nothing! I’m no greeting, you’re greeting! It you want to see a purely wholesome film, go see The Quiet Girl. It’s about how children blossom when given love. Cait is the 4th of 5 kids, and her mother has another on the way. Worn out from her feckless bastard of…
Don Letts narrates the story of his life in Rebel Dread. It’s a pretty amazing life, being at the nexus of iconic cultural moments in music. Growing up in Brixton in London, when it was a Little Jamaica, it was a community of first generation Black Britons, Jamaican immigrant families, and working class white folks.…
This film is absolutely gorgeous. But we’ll get to that in a minute. I was so angry watching this film. Yuni is about a schoolgirl who has to decide between pursuing her education and getting married. Literally 3 adult men want to marry this 16-year-old schoolgirl. Like, what the fuck?! She’s a wean! But it…