Film Festival
Human Rights Watch Film Festival Review: Roll Red Roll
The treatment women receive at the hands of men in almost all countries around the world is reprehensible. It came as no surprise to many but the #metoo movement highlighted just how ingrained the issue is. Just how prevalent sexual assault, abuse and rape is in our society. It’s bad in the UK but it’s …
Film Review: Of Love and Law
Whilst the image many have of Japan may be one of strange gameshows, jaw-dropping fashions and general craziness, at heart it’s an incredibly traditional and conservative country. As a society, it is one which is very much bound by norms. Any deviation from the pack is often viewed as delinquent behaviour, weird and just plain …
Film Review – Destiny: The Tale of Kamakura
Whilst Japan has a rigid social and ultra-conservative society, it’s a country with a long, unusual and complex history of myths and legends. Shinto is one of the oldest continually practiced religions in the world and an odd one for Western sensibilities. One of the most unusual aspects of the Japanese psyche is a belief …
Film Review: Her Love Boils Bathwater
In a conservative country like Japan, the traditional family plays a central role. Whilst attitudes are changing rapidly, there’s still a lot of emphasis placed on the nuclear family. This duty of care is broadened to looking after the old and infirm. When someone become sick it’s the responsibility of their family to take care …
Preview: The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2019
Since 2004, the Japan Foundation has organised a touring Japanese film programme in close partnership with independent film venues across the UK. Each year, a number or eclectic films are carefully chosen to highlight trends in Japanese cinema and showcase the versatility and uniqueness displayed by Japanese filmmakers. It also acts as a showcase for …
LFF Review: Knife +Heart
In 1987, at the tender age of fourteen, Venessa Paradis announced herself to the world with the single Joe le taxi. Two years later she was making a splash in her first film Noce Blanche. Both her music and film career has bubbled along ever since, but it’s probably her high profile and tumultuous marriage …
LFF Review: Ray & Liz
There are very few British working-class voices in modern cinema. It’s one area of representation which seems to have been lost in the mix. This is also the case when it comes to the depiction of poor families on the big screen. It’s a rarity, especially outside of the occasional low budget film. In Ray …
LFF Review: The Guilty
Nowadays, most thrillers you see on the big screen have eye-boggling budgets, multiple action set-pieces and often big dollops of CGI. However, tension isn’t something that can be merely bought. It relies on a cleverly-written script, tight direction and actors who have the ability to keep you in the moment. Films like 12 Angry Men, …
LFF Review: School’s Out
The continuing appeal and obsession with Twin Peaks, now for another generation, demonstrates how much he love a good mystery. Indeed, David Lynch is the grand master of the abstruse and Mulholland Drive remains one of cinema’s most beguiling and confusing puzzles. In the last few years, the likes of The Duke of Burgundy, Kill …
LFF Review: Burning
Whilst slick action films, sickly romantic comedies and stylish horrors may dominate at the box office, Lee Chang-dong is arguably the greatest living Korean director. Over a career which has so far spanned three decades, he has made some of the most thoughtful, beautiful and challenging films coming out of the East. The likes of …