Really interesting micro-budget practically homemade horror. Shot during lockdown by a family in the Appalachian mountains, it is a pared down coming-of-age horror focused on a mother-daughter relationship. Izzy and her mum live alone in the hills. It’s a peaceful and happy existence, surrounded by nature, a warm friendship between the two of them. They…
Really wanted to see this when it came out, kept arranging with my sister to go, but we kept missing it. So delighted to get another chance to see it. Alice Krige gives the lifeblood performance of this film as Veronica Ghent, an aging actress recovering from breast cancer surgery, who seeks solace in a…
Wonderful getting to watch Haxan on the big screen with a specially created score. The classic 1920s silent film examines the witch myth, the mass hysteria of the witch hunt, and its modern explanations of neuroses. In doing so, it births just about every trope of the horror genre to follow. Surprisingly easy watch, given…
The Deathless Woman is a documentary about the persecution of Roma framed around the legend of an undying Roma woman. The unnamed woman was the pregnant wife of the leader of a group of Roma people in Poland during the 40s. When a pig went missing in the nearby village, a local man accused the…
Now, if you’d think that a film about the reporter who broke the story about the Holodomor would be about the Holodomor, and not about the reporter, then you’d make the same mistake I did going into this film. It’s called Mr. Jones for a reason, and that’s because it’s about Mr. Jones. To which…
Some news that went under the radar during the great Covid contraction/spoon collapse of October, was the first films of the GFF were announced – yaldi! Country Focus for ’23 will be Spain, with a really nice selection of new movies. There’s On The Fringe, starring Luis Tosar, who gave that spectular performance in Maixabel,…
Really interesting documentary about South Africa’s first multiracial punk band under apartheid, National Wake. In the late 70s, brought together by a shared love of music and as a fuck-you to apartheid, a bunch of students started living in a house together. By the very fact that some were Black and some were white, this…
Absolutely fascinating documentary. Saying it now, this is gonna be a long review, because this film is packed and to even give an outline of the setup is to dive into a thoroughly messy time in history. Reckonings outlines the story of how Germany came to agree to pay reparations for the Jews killed in…
We Left The Camp Singing is a look at the musical culture in Theresienstadt, the ‘model’ ghetto the Nazis used for propaganda purposes. It was considered by the Nazis to be one of the less harsh places Jews were sent, that there were enough vestiges of a normal life to give the appearance to others,…
I was in two minds about watching this documentary because I’m in such a happy queer space right now and I knew this was just going to be wall-to-wall religious trauma. But it’s such an important subject and it’s such a rare opportunity to have see inside what takes place in conversion therapy. “The religious…