Time of Impatience is about twin brothers who want to swim in the pool belonging to a gated community. It’s a long hot summer in Turkey, and brothers Mirza and Mirhat are Kurds living in a working-class neighbourhood, who can see, so close and yet so far, the relief of a luxury pool behind the…
Based on the written confession of 19th century French killer, Bruno Reidal. The murder puzzled everyone as Bruno was a quiet, intelligent, devout seminary student. After my hand-wringing over Nitram, I pretty much give Bruno Reidal a free pass on account of it being really old and everyone involved being dead. Even though, if you…
I once asked my gran, “Gran, what’s good about getting old?” and she looked me dead in the eye and said, “Fuck all”. That’s what Vortex brought to mind. It’s basically about the nightmare of old age. Elle, beautifully played by Francoise Lebrun, is a retired psychiatrist and writer who is now losing her mind…
So much fun, full of silliness and whimsy! Love, Life and Goldfish is a musical about an uptight banker who is sent to work in a small town in the middle of nowhere where everyone is obsessed with goldfish. Scooping goldfish is a Japanese children’s game, something like hooking ducks at the shows is here.…
Lost Illusions is Mean Girls set in Restoration France. It’s the early half of the 19th century, after the Royalists retake France from Bonaparte, but Napoleon proved that you don’t need the right blood to wield power, and you can’t unring that bell. While the aristocracy go back to playing their games, beneath them, every…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
Now, I liked that more than I thought I would. Not to be cheeky but it’s about two filmmakers who take a residency on Faro, the island where Ingmar Bergman lived. So I was braced for it being full of insufferable wanks going, “The thing about Bergman is . . . blahblahblah . . .…