“Folk horror” is a term which has been applied to a large variety of vastly different, and occasionally disparate, pieces of genre film and fiction – yet what ties together almost all of those works is one central, core concept; that which is past is not dead, and furthermore, it […]
experimental
The Village Detective: A Song Cycle (2021) The Ocean Gives Up Its Mysteries (Review)
In 2016, a crew of Icelandic fishermen operating in the North Atlantic Ocean, dredged up something surprising from the seabed – four decaying reels of film, semi-preserved by the ocean’s natural resources of hydrogen sulphide, that set innovative documentarian Bill Morrison, of Dawson City: Frozen Time fame, on a fascinating […]
A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (2023): Experimental look at Mexican Gang Culture (Review)
As one of the subjects of Everardo Gonzáles’s new film A Wolfpack Called Ernesto puts it, “you get involved by looking”. Where theatre has monologues and novels have first-person narration, film has the close-up as its signature method of encouraging you to identify with a character’s emotions. You could chart […]
Eureka (2024) The Glorious Antithesis of the Issue Movie (Review)
Slow, slow, slow. That is the word, the descriptor, that has been repeated over and over in reviews of Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso’s masterpiece, reoccurring with fevered intensity even in those most positive of responses, and usually attached to a warning that the audience will need to recalibrate their expectations. […]
Worlds: Selected Works by Ben Rivers (2003-2022): Ghosts in the Machine (Review)
Released on Blu-ray by Second Run this week, Worlds: Selected Works by Ben Rivers is a collection of short films – some twenty-four of varying length across two discs – by the internationally renowned British artist and filmmaker, whose experimental work often focuses on subjects that have separated themselves from […]
El Mar La Mar (2017): Experimental cinema in one of Earth’s most hostile landscapes (Review)
The title of Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki’s experimental documentary, El Mar La Mar, released on Blu-Ray by Second Run, refers to a passage in Anabasis by Xenophon of Athens. A chronicle of the victorious campaign of ten thousand Greek mercenaries to secure the Persian throne for their employer Cyrus […]
Skinamarink (2022) the Liminal Horror of 2023’s most divisive movie (Review)
As a child, were you ever afraid of going to the bathroom at night? If you were (or still are), there’s a good chance that you’ll relate to the sense of primal terror that drives Skinamarink. An overnight social-media sensation following its Fantasia Festival premiere (and subsequent online leaking), Skinamarink, […]
Mysterious Object at Noon (2000) the most groundbreaking and innovative director of the 21st century (Review)
The first film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul begins with a shot that approximates the feeling of tuning an analogue radio; mysterious, haunting, archaic and likely to land you somewhere you weren’t expecting. It’s a black-and-white tracking shot through the front window of a moving vehicle, with an overlapping sound mix that […]