I’d heard some of the criticism of Girl, that it focused too much on the trans body and placed too much emphasis on medical transition. Then I saw it, and boy howdy! Does it ever. I mean, wow. Yeah, not difficult to see why folks had problem with it. This is very much a trans…
Thunder Road is amazing! Funniest movie of the festival so far. Really, bleakly dark humour. It follows Jim, a buttoned-down, dorky, Texan, beat cop as he has the worst week of his life. If you ever wondered what it’d be like if a stereotypical, yes-sir, thank ya-ma’am, policeman took a total nervous breakdown, the answer…
A live talk with 3 animators who have worked on films including Isle of Dogs, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Fantastic Mister Fox. It was really interesting to get a look behind the scenes and hear firsthand about all the work that goes in to every shot. Given how labour intensive it is, it’s…
The Man Who Surprised Everyone is a queer film out of Russian. A well-respected family man at the centre of his rural community is diagnosed with untreatable terminal cancer. He makes preparations for his family once he’s gone but his wife begs him to go for last-ditch efforts, even seeking out a traditional healer. This…
The Public is an American movie about homeless people occupying a public library one night during winter. Before the occupation starts, the depiction of what it’s like to work in a library is TOO TRUTH. Defo recognisable to anyone who’s worked in one. The occupation starts out of humanitarian need, but becomes politicised during the…
Angel is the story of a Belgian professional cyclist hiring a Senegalese sex worker for the night. He is the most unbearable self-pitying, braggart, blowhart, drug-addled, misogynistic, abusive, utter cunt. He is as likeable as Joffrey. I genuinely spent the movie hoping he’d die soon. For all his privilege, wealth, fame and talent, he is…
All Creatures Here Below starts out as a road trip crime caper when two simpletons abduct a baby in order to start a new life as a family elsewhere. The light humour gives way to something much darker as the movie goes on. Actually grim as fuck. Bailed on the Q&A because picking over something…
Erased,____Ascent of the Invisible is as much activist art as it is a documentary. It examines the legacy of the disappeared during the Lebanese Civil War (a part of history I am woefully ignorant about). It looks at how the photographs used to find the missing became part of a conglomerate whole, and the search…
Is Loro a biopic or a satire? The trouble is Silvio Berlusconi is such a mad, revolting bastard that it’s hard to tell what elements are fictionalised and what are just the truth presented so grotesquely that it seems unbelievable. The film follows Berlusconi pouting after he goes into opposition in the late 2000s and…
You wouldn’t think you could make a lesbian love story set in 1950s Scotland boring, but somehow Tell It To The Bees manages it. And this is me, someone who could like nothing more than queer women in period dress in raunchy sex scenes. And yet. And what is meant to be a sexy love…