Film
LFF Review: The Alleys
When we’re children, the world around you feels huge and scary. However, as we get older, we soon realise just how small our neighbourhood is. If you live in compact housing, there’s a reasonable chance everyone knows each other. This can be both good and bad. While communities can be great sources of support and …
LFF Review: Ripples of Life
Today’s capitalist China is almost unrecognisable from where the country was at the end of the last century. By embracing private enterprise and a market economy, the ‘red dragon’ has focussed its massive human, technological and mineral resources into becoming the second largest economy in the world. However, this revolution has come at a price, …
Film Review: I Am Belmaya
A criticism often levelled at documentary filmmakers is that they exploit their subject. Go in and tell another’s story, leave and then take all the glory. Even when this isn’t the case, they’re sometimes badged with the label ‘white saviour’: A white person who helps a non-white person in order to benefit themselves. In I …
Film Review: The Velvet Underground
It’s rare to hear a band who sound completely new of different. Who don’t just mimic their idols or produce music which is a slight variation on a popular theme. Nowadays, it’s almost unheard of. Whilst this has always been the case and musicians have always been influenced by what has come before, very occasionally …
Blu-ray Review: The Ape Woman
The popularity of the circus reached its height during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An excitable public went seeking spectacular marvels and freak shows were a staple. These sideshows usually featured a bearded lady. Julia Pastrana was born with a genetic condition, hypertrichosis terminalis, which meant she was covered with thick black hair. …
Blu-ray Review: The Monster
Anyone watching TV during the 1980s will recognise Joan Collins. Indeed, for several generations of Britons she will always be the ever-scheming Alexis Colby. A character she played in Dynasty for the best part of a decade and who became a stalwart of popular culture. While it might come as a surprise, she’s had a …
Grimmfest Review: Blast
Hollywood seems to be obsessed with making big budget action movies which are overloaded with ludicrous set-pieces, vastly overpaid stars and plotlines which could be written on the back of a cigarette packet. All covered in lashings and lashings of obtrusive and often terrible CGI. There’s an obsession with bigger and louder. However, some of …
LFF Review: All About My Sisters
Families are complex and often contradictory groupings at the best of time, but when you add severe external pressures into the mix the many interrelationships can become far more complicated. Introduced by the Communist Party of China in the early 1980s, the ‘one-child’ policy was intended to combat rapid population growth. It was strictly policed …
Grimmfest Review: The Pizzagate Massacre
The wave of populism which followed in the footsteps of Donald Trump has had a profound and lasting impact on American society. Providing a catalyst for the rise of white nationalism, right-wing commentators and alt-right politicians. Not to mention the spike in misinformation and conspiracy theories. One of the strangest was ‘Pizzagate’, a child sex/human …
Grimmfest Review: The Deep House
Bodies of water can be scary places. Sure, we’re fed images of crystal-clear waters in perfect blue hues, but they’re inherently dangerous environments for land-dwellers. However, that on scratches the surface. The deeper you delve; the darker and more mysterious they become. What lurks within their depths? What manner of creature occupies these murky realms, …