Comedy horror about a vampire infestation of Dublin. A hen night from hell is on the rampage, and Deco, a drunken junkie is trying to get back in the house now that he’s starting to sizzle in the sunlight for some reason.
Matt is easily manipulated by his older brother, Deco, and guilted into letting him back in the family home without their mother knowing. Never a good idea, but this time is especially bad, because it looks like Deco is a vampire. Matt tries to help Deco adjust to his new condition, keep him from his craving for blood, and protect him from trainspotter-turned vampire hunter Henry. Henry is wonderfully played by Anthony Head, aka Giles from Buffy, aka Repo Man, aka all round nice guy from the internet.
A big silly, fun adventure, with excellent death effects.
Cambodian sci-fi set in the near future. 13-year-old Leng Heng lives in a shanty town in Phnom Penh, but is about to lose his home so the rich can develop the area. Luckily though, Leng Heng can dream about his past lives, and remembers burying a stolen golden Buddha statue somewhere close by. He enlists neighbourhood ragamuffin Srey Leak to help him find it.
This film is so impressive. It’s really hard to make technology look integrated into recognisably familiar real life, especially when showing it across the class divide. Yet Karmalink makes it look seamless.
I really loved that through the film, as they are going hither and thither, figuring out the secret of the stolen Buddha, they meet with all these neighbourhood characters, the folk that Srey trades with for spare parts, the people who can point you in the right direction for a favour, folk you barter and haggle with, so by the end you too get why Leng Heng loves his community and doesn’t want to leave it. It really builds up the human world, not just the technological one.
In the world of Karmalink, internet access now connects directly to a neural interface, which looks like a wee light up dot you stick on your forehead. When wearing you can turn on access and all wifi forms a 3D space on which information is projected. So it means Leng Heng can record his dreams, and play them back for Srey Leak so they can look for clues.
But there might be more to Leng Heng’s dreams than he realised. Could technology’s ability to record the lifetime of a mind unlock the key to the soul and reveal the mysteries of the cycle of reincarnation?
This film does a lot of difficult things very well, and makes it look easy. To mix sci-fi and spirituality; to tell a story across consciousness, dream, life and death; to show one character played by different actors through previous lifetimes but still remain crystal clear and easy to follow; to have all the young teen mystery of The Goonies while still having an ambitious sci-fi concept; they pull it off like it was nothing, when any element of which could have made the film lose its footing.
Really interesting film, able to satisfy adults looking for a sci-fi and kids looking for an adventure.
Ok, so Angry Young Men was made for, like, £2.50. It’s actually 5 grand, but that’s the same thing by film budget standards. So you’ve got to bear that in mind going into it. This is a micro-budget operation made by a first time filmmaker, basically with his pals. So some stuff will be ropey as fuck.
That being said, it’s awright. It’s a comedy about two young teams squaring off. It’s not going for a real and gritty drama about the mean streets. It’s more about the absurd and achingly parochial nature of it all. The idea of your life’s work to be king of three streets.
The Campbell Group look to move in on the long-held territory of the Bramble Boys. The Bramble Boys set themselves up as a protection racket many years ago, but are effectively collecting money in order to act as the patrol to break up every rowdy teenage fight and retrieve every lost wheelie bin. Some of the original members are beginning to age out, thinking about leaving their shitehole town, or focusing on starting a family. Will the Campbell Group invasion bring them closer together, or break them apart?
The Hermit of Treig is a documentary about Ken Smith, who has lived for the past 40 years by himself in a log cabin of his own making on the hill overlooking Loch Treig. Now in his 70s, he must reckon with how his way of life will shape his end days.
Originally from Derbyshire, he lived much the same as anybody until he was in his mid-20s, when he was the victim of a random, violent attack which almost killed him. He was left comatose with bleeding on the brain. When he awoke, he was told he would never walk or talk again.
He’s a man of some spirit, because he kept at until he did walk and talk again, and it left him with a determination to live life on his own terms. A great lover of the outdoors and very physically active, he travelled to Canada and, almost on a whim, decided to make his way on foot through the forests of the Yukon. When he hit the sea, he decided to return to the UK, and make his home in the most remote place possible. Obviously Scotland was the place for that, up by Loch Treig. He made his own log cabin by hand and has lived there ever since.
How he lives is pretty incredible. There’s no electricity, no gas central heating, no running water. He chops wood and carries it in a sack on his shoulders back to the house for burning, despite now being over 70 years old. He fishes, and grows his own fruit and veg in a garden next to the house. He is also very knowledgeable about which of the local flora is edible.
It’s a life living in simplicity. And with an appreciation for nature.
But time fucks us all. Ken has a stroke one day, and was found lying outside in the snow. He had to be airlifted to the hospital. Since the stroke he has trouble with his memory, some numbness in one arm, and vision problems if he moves around too quickly. It brings home to Ken, that he must make his preparations for the end.
A meditation on mortality and an examination of what is a life well-lived. Fascinating film.
Ken, a sad divorced dad, who is a shut-in and an alcoholic, tries to earn a living by posting videos online. When a viewer notices an odd event in the background of one of his videos, he blows up as a ghost case. Help comes in the form of Colin Albertson, a paranormal writer who encourages Ken to do a ritual to trap the restless spirit in a jar.
Managing to fit in a couple of good scares with a couple of good laughs, this is a solid Friday night film.
A short film about survival. A lassie runs and fights for her life in what seems to be a never-ending competitive gauntlet.
The director introduced this by saying the original idea was “What if the chicken fight from Family Guy was serious?” As silly as that sounds, this short film actually works. Which is almost against the odds, because there’s no dialogue, no speech beyond an automated computer announcement, and it’s basically just a chase scene followed by a fight scene. That’s action-packed but you’d think it wouldn’t really hold together as a story.
But you’d be wrong. It’s actually really well done. I had a clear idea of who the main character was, what she wanted, the situation she found herself in. Like, yes it’s mostly a fight scene, but the story of what’s going on is told through it. Given that there’s only two actors in this, both have to be commended. Things could have been very different if they hadn’t been top of their game.
Simple, straightforward, clear, but also action-packed, energetic and exciting. Good stuff.
I didn’t know about the events in Heliopolis before seeing this film. That’s because we learn fuck all about Empire. True, this is France’s empire, but if there was room on the curriculum for me to learn about Schleswig-Holstein in the German Wars of Unification, there was time for this. A fucking degree I have in history, and never heard about this.
Heliopolis follows the story of one family as they live through the Second World War in Heliopolis, in French colonial Algeria. Mukdad is a kaid, a leader of the local people, someone who is responsible for an area, in Mukdad’s case, Heliopolis, Guelma and Setif. He inherited this title from his father, who always felt uncomfortable with his elevated status among his people and felt the burden of responsibility heavily. When the French arrived, he embraced the education they offered, and put a lot of emphasis on getting as much benefit for his people as possible. Mokdad feels the same and has sent his son, Mahfoud, to Algiers for a secondary school education.
Mahfoud has excelled academically and has done everything his father wanted of him. But his education comes to a screeching halt when he cannot get entrance to college. The reason? He is an Arab, and colleges only admit whites. He returns home, destined with menial work, and with a very different outlook on life as his father.
They argue over support for independence. Mahfoud supports the independence movement for obvious reasons, the equality, self-determination, etc. His father Mokdad is more conservative. He says independence is too radical a solution. Yes, there are things wrong with France, but who educated taught him, his father, his grandfather? Mokdad only completed primary, Mahfoud completed secondary. Things do move and change slowly, just be patient.
Before the war, there is a high degree of intermingling between Mokdad’s class and the white settlers. The ordinary Arabs, not so much. But Mokdad has several white friends, and Mahfoud is pally with Claude, a white settler his age. Yes, there are out-and-out racists, like Gervais, but they are left to just mouth off, that’s all.
The war changes all that. Algerians fight and die for France, but are still second-class citizens in their own country. France’s fall to the Nazis in 10 days makes it seem possible for the first time that France can be defeated. Algeria is then subject to Vichy rule until liberated by the Americans and Brits. In the first free elections after fascist rule, pro-independence candidates are able to stand. Despite the politicians’ attempts to speak in very measured terms, the settlers are enflamed by what they see as treason. There’s a lot of the familiar “My grandad died in the war for this country” bullshit, as though the takeaway from that is it should remain racist for all time.
Mahfoud has signed up with the independence party, and openly campaigned for them during the election. The whole way through, Mokdad warns, they’ll take this as a provocation. Mahfoud’s a bit like, So what? They take everything as a fucking provocation.
And then the Nazis lose! Europe is free! Peace and freedom forever, right? Right?
The day the Nazis surrender, in Setif and Guelma, the Algerians hold parades celebrating, and carry independence banners and sing independence songs. The police repression is swift and brutal. People are shot, people are injured, people die.
In the following days there are isolated revenge attacks on the settlers, which causes Paris to instruct the armed forces in Algeria to wipe out anyone deemed responsible for the attacks, including independence organisers. What follows is wholesale slaughter. They round up and shoot every independence campaigner they can find. Settler militias start shooting any Arab they come across. France sends planes to literally drop bombs on villages. By then end, almost 30,000 people are dead.
For Mokdad and his family, it changes everything. A brilliantly compelling historical drama, with an excellent score and beautiful cinematography.
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 walls of a rich, redeveloped, private housing estate. They scrawl up slogans asking why only the rich and white can swim there.
Their nemesis is Zeke, the janny tasked with keeping the riff-raff out. Every day Mirza and Mirhat go to bam him up, asking him questions, making jokes at his expense and generally goading him. He chases them off but they always return.
The film follows them trying a number of schemes to get into the gated community to swim in the pool. After each disappointment, they sit around sulking and talking about the unfairness of life.
With Time of Impatience, I think something was lost in translation a bit with a lot of the dialogue. It’s meant to be funny, but it’s not really. I also wasn’t a fan of the pacing. I found it too baggy. There was too much air between events. It drained the film of any momentum.
Olga is a Ukrainian teenage gymnast training for the Olympics. Because her father was Swiss, she has the opportunity to go and train in Switzerland, but it will mean competing for their team instead of Ukraine’s.
The film is set during the 2014 Euromaidan protests. Now, we didn’t pay much attention to that here, because we didn’t know it was gonna be part of a series of events that would end with Russia invasion. Long story short, the pro-Russian President Yanukovich’s popularity had waned because he ran a government rife with corruption, which seemed to be draining billions out the state, and which was horrendous with human rights abuses. He was widely accused of being nothing more than a puppet for Putin. Then Yanukovich refused to sign a political agreement with the EU, effectively bringing Ukraine’s membership efforts to a halt.
Shit blows up. People take to the streets. They occupy the main square in Kyiv in protest. The police, the military, everybody attacks them, but they last it out and Yanukovich flees the country, and the new government basically cleans house. (That’s the good news. The bad news is Yanukovich basically runs greeting to Putin and it becomes a pretext for the 2014 Russian invasion, but that’s a story for another time).
Anyway, the TLDR is the film is set during a revolution for the good in Ukraine. When the film starts, Olga’s just 15 and focused only on getting to the Olympics. Her mum, though, is a journalist. She has the same single-mindedness as Olga, working on stories about corruption and criticising Yanukovich. Olga and her mother’s interactions frequently spark friction as both have all-consuming obsessions, but underneath she is really proud of her mum, and they love each other very much. There’s a lot of support there, going both ways.
In an early scene, someone tries to run Olga’s mum off the road, while Olga is in the passenger seat. Suddenly now seems like a good time to get out of dodge. Olga is packed off to Switzerland, where she has entry to the Swiss national team, on account of her father. They have superior equipment, but there’s no camaraderie, and Olga struggles to make friends. Her rusty French is one reason, but mostly they just view her as one more person they have to compete against.
Isolated, under the strain of daily demanding practice, when the Euromaidan protests start up, it seems like more than one person can bear. Her mother is right in the fray covering the story, and her pal takes to the barricades to help. She is constantly worried about what is happening at home.
In signing up for the Swiss team, she will effectively be signing away her Ukrainian citizenship. Is that something she is willing to do, on top of all else? And how can she possibly keep her head straight for a competition when all this is going on?
Adult Adoption is a comedy about family, finding it and making it. Rosy is 25 years old and has aged out the foster care system. She signs up to an online site that is basically Tinder for adult adoptees. It’s kinda a rom-com about meeting The One, except for parents not lovers.
What I really liked about it is it makes a comedy out of a subject that is mostly treated as tragedy – growing up in the care system. Rosy is no victim and refuses to conform to the traumatised and troubled stereotype everyone has for her when they hear she was in care. I mean, she’s a mess, but no more than anyone else.
Loneliness is mostly her problem. In fact most people in the film are searching for something, to a greater or lesser extent, everybody’s looking for connection. Because Rosy doesn’t have a family, she assumes that this is what she needs. She finds dating functional, more a hook-up kinda thing, and she’s not looking to settle down just yet. So it’s more a parental bond she wants.
Other people are doing the same thing. Jane, who Rosy meets on the site and bonds with as a mother, has an estranged daughter, which has left her with a lot of pain. Brian, also from the site, seems to be searching for some kind of fantasy, a sort of recapturing of something gone. Rosy’s friend Nola seems to have got embroiled in a cult, which promises a sense of family and home.
The most together character is nice guy Dan. He’s a total sweetheart and I really liked him. He seems like he would be really good for Rosy, just maybe not right now. She’s still figuring a lot of stuff out.
I really liked Rosy. Her colour palate is best described as ice cream and bubblegum. She listens to hyperpop and is basically all of us in our early 20s, with imposter syndrome. You wanna shout, “I’m not a real adult! I just snuck into a job and a flat and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing!” Same here babe, same here.
Adult Adoption is funny and really well realised. I loved the attention to detail, like really fleshing out all the side characters. Like Brian’s outfit style getting younger and younger as he regresses. Or Helen’s collection of crystals and her ability to tell you what each one is for. And her constantly going on about what she talked about in therapy – identify! And Nola turning her dress into a tube top. I just loved it.
With warmth and humour, this film is like a big hug saying, “Rosy, you’re a hot mess. Welcome to the world!”
