Film Festival
Raindance Review: Our River…Our Sky
Thanks to the reign of Saddam Hussein and two Gulf Wars, people in the West are much more familiar with Iraq than most of the Middle East. While the end of war might have signalled a new era for Iraq, that didn’t mean peace. Indeed, even while the coalition still occupied the country, violence and …
WIFF Review: Rock. Paper. Grenade
Following the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine regained its independence in 1991. While it was seen as a fresh new beginning, declaring itself politically neutral, as with many of the former Soviet states it struggled to adapt to capitalism. The transition to a market economy has been a bumpy one and, even before Putin’s invasion …
LFF Review: The Origin of Evil
They say money makes the world go round, but having a lot of it comes with a price. It puts a target on your back. People know you have it and they want it for themselves. When you’re the matriarch or patriarch of a rich family and entering the twilight years of your life, your …
LFF Review: Autobiography
Although we’re well into the twenty-first century now, corruption is just as rife as it has ever been. You could argue, in fact, that in many parts of the world it’s worse than ever. The stakes are much higher than ever before and the obsession with wealth just seems to get stronger. The fight between …
LFF Review: Crows Are White
There’s something almost ingrained within humans to look for a purpose. A higher calling. Something other than what’s in front of us in our daily lives. A compulsion to find something to believe in. This is the whole essence of religion and it has been a driving force for ‘man’ since the dawn of recorded …
LFF Review: Jeong-sun
Growing up is never easy at the best of times but doing so in an era of smartphones, social media and unlimited data contracts must be an absolute nightmare. Our social interactions suddenly become very public. Any mistakes or rash spur of the moment decisions can easily be captured and shared. Especially if someone has …
LFF Review: Sick of Myself
It has been a profitable couple of years for Norwegian cinema and there are few hotter actors at the minute than Kristine Kujath Thorp. Indeed, since her breakout performance in Ninjababy last year she’s gone on to flex her action muscles in John Andreas Andersen’s The Burning Sea. However, so far, comedy is where she …
Grimmfest Review: Vesper
Science fiction is one of the difficult genres to get right on the big screen, particularly when it’s an adaptation of an existing property. The biggest hurdle to cross is world building. Fans of a book, or series of books, will already have their own ideas and impressions, so managing and meeting expectations is extremely …
Grimmfest Review: The Harbinger
Those of us in the West are fortuitous to be living in an unusually stable period of history. While the current pandemic has shaken the world in ways which were unimaginable just a few years ago, epidemics used to be commonplace. During outbreaks of the bubonic plague, towns hired plague doctors. These were often second-rate …
Grimmfest Review: Malibu Horror Story
Found footage remains one of the most popular areas of modern genre cinema. Spurred by the success of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, this century has seen a raft of films vying for the attention of horror fans. Filmmakers drawn by the relatively low production costs. In the majority of cases, they’ve fallen …