Film
Visions du Réel Review: Mutzenbacher
We live in an oddly puritanical age. I don’t think anyone could have envisaged that the widespread availability of pornography via the internet would have such a strange effect. It’s ubiquitous and in just about any fetish can be satisfied at the touch of a button. After a few decades of moral panic about our …
Grimmfest Easter Review: The Family
When Europeans made the long and dangerous journey across the Atlantic Ocean to the new world, they took their religion with them. Indeed, in many cases the more puritanical elements saw it as a great opportunity to practice their beliefs in peace. Numerous communities sprung up, drawn together by their piety. Often becoming fanatical and …
Visions du Réel Review: Silent Love
If you’ve grown up in Western Europe it’s easy to become complacent about all the freedoms we’re afforded. Things we take for granted are very much major issues in countries not too far away. Many of the former Soviet Central and Eastern European states are much less progressive than you’d expect, even if they’re now …
Film Review – Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle
Wars are never straightforward. The bigger the conflict, both in terms of length and size of the arena of battle, the messier things like logistics and communications become. The Pacific theatre during World War II is a prime example. fighting took place across countless islands, big and small, scattered across the ocean. Groups easily became …
Grimmfest Easter Review: Post Mortem
The scientific and lay world have been fascinated with near death experiences for hundreds of years. In the same way we humans are overly preoccupied with our own mortality, our curiosity around the concept of an afterlife often gets the better of us. The desperation to believe that there’s something more than this mortal realm …
Visions du Réel Review: Chaylla
According to the World Health Organisation, one-in-three women have experience physical or sexual violence at some stage in their lives. This frightening statistic hammers home just how endemic the problem it is in almost every country in the world. That’s before you even take into account the damage caused by verbal abuse and controlling behaviour. …
Visions du Réel Review: A Holy Family
Families are complicated units. Created through generations of complex and often contradictory interrelationships and experiences. Not all children are the same. Some want to fly the nest at the first opportunity while others will never leave. Preferring the safety and security staying provides. For many though, there’s simply isn’t a choice. It’s a case of …
Visions du Réel Review: A Marble Travelogue
We live in a global consumer-driven world and while this might have been great for many in the West in terms of low prices, when the pandemic hit we saw the drawbacks of this supply chain. War has caused another rift in this complex arrangement. Europe, in general, has outsourced its manufacturing to the far …
Film Review: See You Then
The culture wars have never been so pernicious and the constant transphobia which infests every online platform is horrendous. Despite what some bigots like to spout, the decision to transition from your biological sex to a different gender is a huge decision. One which involves a long and painful process, not something anyone would do …
Blu-Ray Review – Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th
The late 1970s and 1980s was the era of the mega horror franchises. Innovations in filmmaking techniques and technologies, not to mention the growing turbulence within the world, made it a fertile time for genre cinema to flourish. Huge series sprung up, which weren’t just big box office hits but also gained avid (often rabid) …